How to Make a Resume Look Professional

A professional-looking resume is not a decorated one. It is a page where the reader can find your title, your recent experience and your key skills in a few seconds, and where nothing about the layout gets in the way. The same qualities make it easier for an applicant tracking system (ATS) to read.

This guide focuses on presentation: the specific formatting rules that make a resume look polished. For the content itself, see our guide on how to build a professional resume that gets you noticed.

Want to skip the setup? Our resume templates are single-column, ATS-friendly layouts with real text and embedded fonts, and they already follow the rules below.

The Formatting Rules

Page and margins

• Use US Letter size (8.5 by 11 inches) for US applications.
• Set margins between 0.5 and 1 inch on all sides. Around 0.75 inch is a good default. Going below 0.5 inch makes the page look crammed.
• Keep margins the same on the left and right.

Fonts and sizes

• Pick one clean, widely available font, such as Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Garamond, Georgia or a similar sans-serif or serif. Use it for the whole document.
• Body text: 10 to 12 point. Below 10 point is hard to read.
• Section headings: 12 to 14 point, bold or small caps.
• Your name: 16 to 22 point. It should be the largest text on the page.
• Use bold for your name, section headings and job titles. Use italics sparingly, for example for dates or locations. Avoid underlining except for links.

Spacing

• Line spacing between 1.0 and 1.15.
• Add a little extra space before each section heading so sections are easy to spot.
• Keep the spacing between jobs identical throughout.
• White space is not wasted space. If the page feels dense, cut words before you shrink the font.

Layout: single column

Use a single-column layout, top to bottom. Two-column designs can look attractive, but many ATS parsers read across columns and mix up your text, or skip a sidebar entirely. Also avoid:

• Tables and text boxes for main content.
• Putting contact details or other important information in the document header or footer.
• Icons, photos, logos, charts and skill-level bars.
• Text inside images.

If you want a little visual interest, use a thin horizontal rule under section headings or a single accent color for headings. That is enough.

Section order

For most people, this order works:

1. Name and contact information
2. Professional summary
3. Work experience
4. Skills
5. Education
6. Certifications, projects or other optional sections

Recent graduates can move education above experience. Career changers can use a short "Core Skills" or "Selected Achievements" section right after the summary.

Use standard section names: "Professional Summary," "Work Experience" or "Experience," "Skills," "Education," "Certifications." Creative headings like "My Journey" confuse both readers and software.

Contact line

• Full name on its own line.
• One line underneath with city and state, phone, professional email and a LinkedIn or portfolio URL, separated by a simple divider such as a vertical bar.
• No full street address, photo, date of birth or marital status.

Dates

• Choose one format and use it everywhere: "Jan 2022 – Present," "01/2022 – Present" or "2022 – Present."
• Align dates the same way for every entry, usually flush right on the job title line or directly under it.
• Use an en dash or hyphen consistently between start and end dates.

Bullets

• Use simple round bullets or hyphens. Avoid arrows, checkmarks and custom symbols.
• Keep most bullets to one or two lines.
• Start each bullet with a verb and do not end them with periods unless you do it consistently.
• Three to six bullets for recent roles is plenty.

For how to write the bullets themselves, see how to write professional experience.

Length

• One page if you have under about ten years of experience.
• Two pages for most experienced professionals. If you go to a second page, fill at least half of it and repeat your name at the top.

File format and name

• Submit a DOCX or a text-based PDF, whichever the posting asks for. If it does not say, a PDF exported from your word processor keeps your formatting intact.
• Never submit a scanned image or a PDF made from a photo of your resume. The text cannot be read.
• Name the file clearly, for example FirstName-LastName-Resume.pdf, not resume_final_v3.pdf.
• Open the exported file before sending it to check that nothing shifted.

A Quick Visual Check

Before you send your resume, print it or view it at full page size and ask:

• Can I find my name, current title and most recent job in five seconds?
• Are all headings the same size and style?
• Are all dates in the same format and aligned the same way?
• Is there consistent spacing between sections and between jobs?
• Is anything important in a header, footer, table, text box or image?

A good extra test is to copy all the text from your PDF and paste it into a plain text editor. If it comes out in a sensible order, an ATS will most likely read it correctly too.

Common Formatting Mistakes

• Mixing several fonts or font sizes for the same kind of text.
• Shrinking the font or margins to squeeze everything onto one page.
• Multi-column templates, graphics and skill bars.
• Inconsistent date formats.
• Dense paragraphs instead of bullets.
• Bright colors or heavy shading.
• Spelling and grammar errors. No layout makes up for a typo in a job title.

Using HireCurve

HireCurve is AI software that handles both the tailoring and the formatting. You upload your resume once, paste in a job description, and it tailors your resume to that job using only your own experience, with every line citing its source. You can choose from five single-column, ATS-friendly templates, switch between them at any time, and export a matching PDF and DOCX. There is a free plan with two applications a month.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most professional font for a resume?

Any clean, common font used consistently. Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Georgia and Garamond are all safe choices. Readability matters more than the specific font.

Should a professional resume use color?

A single, restrained accent color for headings is fine. Avoid color for body text and avoid designs that depend on color to make sense.

Is a PDF or Word document more professional?

Both are professional. Follow the job posting's instructions. If there are none, a text-based PDF preserves your layout, while DOCX is sometimes preferred by recruiters who want to edit or by older systems.