How To Get Your Resume Looking Great (tips from a designer)

1. You might have a great fandangled font in Microsoft Word that you want to use – convert your document to a pdf before sending so that your reader can actually see the font. Actually, convert it to a pdf full stop. This stops any further editing and makes it look distraction free for your potential boss.
2. Pop colour, but don’t spew colour. Save it for main headings. Stick to 2 different colours maximum. If you want to add another colour, use a shade of an existing one instead.
3. Keep it all consistent. Headings should always have the same size and colour. Same goes for body text, bullets and sub headings.
4. Fonts – stick to 2, or even better one. Avoid anything too curvy or curly or comic-y. It’s the content that should speak loudly, nothing else.
5. If you want to have a profile picture, do it. It doesn’t have to be in a suit – so long as you look confident, happy and approachable.
6. Try and trim the copy and fit everything comfortably to 2 pages. Culling seems to be a hard thing – but if you wanted someone to know something about you, what would you want them to know? These people don’t have time, so just give them the best cuts.
7. When you talk about how amazing you are, try and be specific. If you’ve improved efficiency in the workplace – what specific outcome did you bring in? Was it trimming 5 days of work to 4? Talk about it.
8. Choose 3 things that are amazing and highlight them. Either with colour, italics or in a little speech box.
9. Stick to portrait. With folios, I usually tell designers to work in landscape (most creative directors won’t print a folio in full colour). Most employers will print a resume and are used to seeing things in portrait. Don’t waste their time fiddling with the page settings.
10. Have a really quiet footer that includes your name and email address and number. Contacting you should be super easy.
11. Use a few subtle underlines (to separate a footer from the main body or to create some distinction in your headings). Try and drop the line thickness to 0.25 or something super thin. And keep it in the same colour as the text above it. Underlines are to page layouts what chilli flakes are to Indians. You feel incomplete without both.
12. Title // Organisation
    TITLE Organisation
    Title Organisation
    There are different ways to create hierarchy and difference other than creating a new line or being obvious.

1. Include a link to your LinkedIn profile but not your Facebook one (business only till we really are friends).
2. Clean up your public feeds (twitter, facebook, instagram etc). Yes, they’ll likely google you if you seem like a potential candidate.
3. Be super critical. Is it messy, is it over loaded, can I say this better, can they tell at a glance what I’m about? Be harsh on yourself now and it’ll pay off later.
4. I read somewhere that men apply for jobs they think they can’t get. Women only apply for jobs they think they have a 100% chance of getting. So go nuts. A little rejection email in your inbox won’t hurt as much as you think. But on the upside! Crack that ceiling.

All the best with the application!