The short answer is easy to guess.

The long answer, which is not actually so long, is in this article.

The elements of a professional and engaging resume

Nowadays, people from all parts of the world say that creative resumes are the best.

And this is true.

But a professional resume, and we all want such a resume, need to have certain elements.

When having all these elements, the chances to be hired are much higher.

Photo of you

It is not mandatory but if you don’t include one, your resume will look highly incomplete.

I personally know companies, big ones, that are not even looking on resumes that are not having a picture included.

Why is that?

They consider that these candidates didn’t invest enough time in preparing their resumes.

And this is actually right.

Why would you not put a picture on your resume?  

If you would be the hiring person, you would want to see the candidate, right?

So, the best thing to do is to ask a professional photographer to help you with this picture.

Pay huge attention to the clothes you wear, where you take the picture, how you smile, which is your body language, and everything else.

Don’t use an old photo of you, even if that photo is amazing. If you will do that, there is a huge chance that you will not be recognized at the interview.

It happened to me several times, in huge corporations. Before going to meetings, I was looking for that person on LinkedIn and other places, and most of them had 10 years old pictures.

Text

The text you will include and its order defers quite a lot for many countries and industries.

If there is a local best practice that you know about, respect it or at least take it into consideration, you might include a part of it or all of it.

Design

The design of your resume is highly important, especially if you apply to high tech companies or creative companies.

If you dream to work as an engineer at Tesla, you need to pay huge attention to your resume design.

Don’t get a template, not even a premium one.

If you really want to maximize your chances to obtain the job, hire a designer and work with him for a fully customized and special resume.

Video

Embed a video on your resume, this is something that few persons do but which has a huge impact.

The cost to do it is very small, you can record yourself wherever you want.

Contact details

Contact details are part of the text right, but you should have a separate design for them.

Make them viewable.

Clean, short, and concise

You want your resume to stand out of the crowd.

For that, you should have a short, clean, and concise resume.

Only a talented and experienced graphic designer can help you, again, don’t use a template.

How important are the font and the font size for your resume?

This is the main topic of the article, and I am happy to share with you the importance of the font in a resume.

When someone open your resume, they see one big picture.

The big picture is the overall design, which is made out of all the above elements.

Now imagine this big picture in a small font size.

It would look terrible, right?

What about a hard to read font?

Again, your resume will be unfunctional, being difficult to read.

So which fonts and font sizes work best for your resume?

It highly depends on your industry, on your personal style, and on the designer, you work with.

But you should pay attention to these font tips for your resume:

– Free fonts are used by the whole planet. Use them only if they are an exceptional good fit for your resume design.

– You want your font to complement your resume design, and not overtake it. Don’t go for highly complicated fonts.

– Premium fonts are nice but don’t overdo it. Don’t get a font that is $500, maybe your interviewer knows about this and you will create a weird image.

– Do lots of tests. Try as many fonts as possible, and check how they look on your resume.

– Pick a font size that helps you have a short resume but which doesn’t affect the readability.

– Font color. Stay with black if you don’t work with an experienced graphic designer, it is the safest option.

Conclusions

All the elements of a resume are important but the font and the font size can ruin your resume in milliseconds.

Yes, that fast.

Follow the above tips and make your resume stand out of the crowd.

The post How important are the font and the font size for your resume? appeared first on WhatFontIs.com Playground.

Can the fonts influence extremely high the content we write and the way people will receive our letters?

Should we use free or paid fonts, serif or sans serif fonts?

Below, you will find insights and recommendations from experts from all over the internet. I will answer to all these questions and offer you useful tips.

Of course, that the font plays a major role. And this happens not only in CVs, cover letters, and resumes, but everywhere else.

Just imagine a super CV (layout, content, and candidate picture) that uses a super small font. From the very first contact, your brain will automatically get a bad sensation because he finds it hard to read the CV and from that moment impressions start to be created about the candidate.

Now imagine a CV that uses a very large font, again your brain will automatically think about the candidate something. Maybe he will think that he used a large font just to fill more pages.

Let’s see which are the right fonts for CVs, cover letters, and resumes

To be easier to follow the insights and recommendations from world experts, I will use a format with bullet points.

Always keep in mind that common sense is the most important in any font decision you will take and there are not magical formulas that will transform your work.

Here are 8 tips to choose the right fonts

Font psychology (the study of how different fonts impact thoughts, feelings, and behaviors) is among the most important parts when choosing the right font.

People have very different thoughts, feelings, and associations with different font types.

Using the principles of font psychology, pick a font that is perfectly adapted to your CV, cover letter, or resume.

The font should reflect your personality, your job, your way of being, and so on.

Pay super attention on this aspect.

The appearance of professionalism.

Depending on what you need the font for, you should pick fonts that have create the appearance of professionalism.

It is fine for a personal email to use a casual font, but for a CV, cover letter, or resume you should pick a font that will help you be a professional.

Free or paid font? This decision is not as important as you might think.

It is great to use a paid font only if it is truly special and you highly believe that it will help you create a much better design and response from your audience.

Font size will have a huge impact on your design.

Font size is extremely important, you can have the best content in the world, if you use a bad font size (too small or too large) you will destroy everything.

You should use different font sizes for headers, sub header, and paragraphs.

Take your time and try different sizes until you find a equilibrium.

Serif or sans serif?

You should sans serif fonts in your CV, cover letters, and resumes.

Sans serif fonts are the perfect choice for these types of creations and for online.

Serif fonts are best used in print and logos.

Font color

Normally you should use black on your whole design but there are times when you can combine black with grey and create a much better design.

If you think that you can achieve a better design by combining 2 colors, take your time and do some tests.

Stick to 2 colors and not more, you don’t want to transform your document into a rainbow.

The most popular fonts

Should you pick one of the most popular fonts? Yes and no.

It depends very much on your document type (CV, cover letter, resume) and on your audience.

If you are a graphic designer and you are creating your CV, best is to use a paid font. You want to convince your audience that you have the right skills and experience in your industry.

But if you are an accountant, the font is not important. You only need a font that is easy to read.

Easy to read fonts

No matter what font you pick for your documents, first check it if it is easy to read and understand.

Try it with your friends.

Do all the tests, you don’t want your audience to have difficult times when reading your document.

Conclusions

I say it again, there are no magical formulas or secrets when choosing the right fonts for CVs, cover letters, and resumes.

There is only common sense.

Save the article link and come back to it whenever you need to choose fonts for different types of documents.

The post The Right Fonts For CVs, Cover Letters, and Resumes appeared first on WhatFontIs.com Playground.

Elle Woods got into Harvard with a resume printed on pink, perfumed paper – to give a little something extra – as she said. Then again, the title character of the Legally Blonde movies also had pink, perfumed bags when she was out walking her dog. So, just for now, let’s try to stay away from pink, perfumed paper, and also from the Big Little Lies (pun intended) we may be tempted to sneak into our resumes. 

The truth is, if you put enough attention and effort into writing and editing your resume, you won’t really need to lie that you spent the last six months saving an endangered butterfly species in the rainforest. No, the fact that you shared something about that on Facebook does not make you an environmental activist. 

Writing your resume: choose the best fonts

When writing your resume, make sure that the information you’re sending as your calling card to the world is not only true, accurate and precise, but that it is also presented in the best form to head hunters and potential employers. That means finding the best fonts for your resume. 

Several studies have found that, on average, a recruiter will spend about six seconds reading a resume before deciding if a candidate is eligible for the position they’re looking to fill. So, let’s try to make the most out of those six seconds. 

One of the first things you should keep in mind when choosing the best font for your resume is that one thing head hunters know better than almost anything is how to spot a slacker. That means there’s no replacement for time and effort. Put them in first, then we can talk about which font looks good on your resume. 

Attention to details will demonstrate to recruiters just from a glance that you have an overall sense of style and aesthetics, but also the more pragmatic skills of knowing how to use a word processor. Imagine just what they think of candidates who write they have ‘proficient’ abilities in Microsoft Word, but who fail to select the same font size for resumes. Yeah, they don’t get called in for an interview. 

The font you use in your resume should be fit for both paper and online reading. Even though you’re sending your resume in an e-mail, a lot of head hunters print them out for analyzing. 

Size & types of fonts for resumes

There isn’t a consensus when it comes to the best font to use in your CV. The most used is obviously Times New Roman, the main reason being the wide accessibility to this font in all major word editing software. This typeface is the most professional looking among the first options in both Microsoft Word and Google Docs. 

Recruiters themselves have weighed in on the issue of what fonts they prefer for resumes and we’ll get to their recommendations in just a few moments. 

One of their widely accepted recommendations is to use a sans serif font on your resume, mostly because so many employers and head hunters are now reading CV’s on multiple devices or on the go. That means a good font for a resume will be legible on both phone screen and desktop. If you do decide on a serif font – and we’ve also included a few serif fonts for resumes in our list below – make sure it is a rather subtle one.

Most smartphones now have responsive features for all documents, so they could automatically converse your font to a legible size customized to each screen it is opened on.

But that does not mean that you should not pay attention to the size of the font you use in a resume. Don’t use cheap tricks like pumping the size of the font just to make your resume longer. It will look awful and anyone who’s ever seen a CV before will understand immediately why you’re using a 16 size font. Instead, opt for the regular 12 size. Be careful, this might change depending on the font you decide on. 

Best fonts for resumes: recruiter’s choice

• Calibri is the top option in many recruiter’s eyer when it comes to writing your resume. Its smoothness on any screen makes it just as legible as Times New Roman, but it has the advantage of showing you didn’t just go with the default option. 

• Garamond looks good on a resume due to its old style, somewhat sophisticated vibe. It also fits academic documents. 

• Helvetica help your resume pop up, without being too loud. Recruiters will notice it from other CV’s because they will likely recognise it: Helvetica is used by the New York City Subway sistem and also by the German auto giant BMW.

• Cambria brings a fresh air among the dozens of fonts used in resumes. It was created specifically to look good when printed at small sizes, so that offers a neat, clean aspect to your CV. 

• Didot is the font recommended for your CV if you’re specialized in arts, design, photography or graphics. The huge history the Didot font has in fashion and lifestyle magazines will make your resume look classy and sophisticated, without any effort.

• Gill Sans has the advantage of being somewhat rare all around, but especially in resumes. Its early XXth century English aesthetic will complement your work experience. It was also the original font used on the viral ‘Keep calm and carry on’ posters, so it will just make the recruiter or employer take a second look at you CV even without knowing why. 

• Constantia is best used in resumes that want to give that human touch. Its roundness may seem less formal, but not enough to be ill advised for CV’s. 

• Arial is a staple nowadays, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid it. It offers the clean, no nonsense look professionals need when trying to describe their life’s work and experience as briefly and clearly as possible. 

• Georgia may also seem too obvious, but keep in mind its a great alternative for traditionalists who are looking for alternatives to Times New Roman. Even if it is a serif font, its thick lines make it easy to read on any screen or PDF document. 

• Book Antiqua has gentle and subtle lines, great for giving that extra something. It is based on the Palatino font, so it has the humanist style it is known for. It looks great on resumes because of its vintage look.

Passionate about fonts or just looking for a quick solution for your lettering woes? WhatFontIs.com provides a catalogue of over 550.000 fonts that you can browse until you find the one that fits you just right. 

Also, make sure you check the Blog Section – you might get that cool idea that will help you better define you visual identity. 

The post Best fonts for your resume: how & what to choose appeared first on WhatFontIs.com Playground.