Resume Formatting Guide (Fonts, Margins, Spacing, Sections)

RisenResume · 8 min read

The small formatting decisions on a resume add up. A cluttered, hard-to-skim document gets passed over in seconds — even when the underlying experience is strong. A clean, scannable document earns you the extra ten seconds that often makes the difference between a "yes" and a "maybe". Here is what consistently works.

Layout: single column, always

Single column is the only safe choice for an ATS-readable resume. Multi-column layouts get scrambled by ATS parsers — they often read left to right across the whole page, mixing sidebar content into the main flow and producing nonsense. Visually clever resumes lose to plain ones in practice.

Fonts that work (and ones that do not)

Safe choices:

• Inter — modern sans-serif, very readable
• Helvetica / Arial — universal, plain
• Calibri — Microsoft default, clean
• Georgia or Cambria — if you prefer a serif
• Garamond — classic and tight, good for fitting more on a page

Avoid:

• Comic Sans (obvious)
• Times New Roman — not banned, but reads as dated
• Script or decorative fonts
• Anything you downloaded from a free fonts site that may not render the same on a recruiter's machine

Mix at most two fonts: one for headings, one for body. Keep them in the same family if you can.

Font sizes

• Name: 18-24pt
• Section headings: 12-14pt, bold
• Job titles: 11-12pt, bold
• Body text and bullets: 10.5-11pt
• Never below 10pt. Below that, recruiters struggle to read, especially when the document is printed.

Margins and white space

Standard margins are 1 inch on all sides. If you need to fit more, you can go to 0.75 inches comfortably and 0.5 inches at the minimum — below that the page feels cramped and reads as desperate.

Line spacing should be 1.0 to 1.15 inside paragraphs, with a small gap between sections. Avoid 1.5 or 2.0 line spacing — it looks like you are stretching content to fill space.

Section order

Most professionals:

1. Header (name, contact info)
2. Summary
3. Experience
4. Education
5. Skills
6. Certifications (if relevant)

Recent graduates and career changers:

1. Header
2. Summary or objective
3. Education
4. Projects
5. Experience (broadly defined)
6. Skills
7. Certifications

Regulated professions (nurses, engineers, accountants, lawyers):

1. Header
2. Credentials / Licensure
3. Summary
4. Experience
5. Education
6. Certifications

The header

Include: full name, city and state (no street address), phone, email, LinkedIn URL, and a portfolio URL if relevant. Skip: photo, marital status, date of birth, full street address. Photos and personal info are standard in some countries but skip them for US, UK, Canada, Australia.

Bullet point format

Use bullet points, not paragraphs, for your experience. Each bullet should be one to two lines. Three or more lines and the bullet becomes a paragraph and stops being scannable.

Start every bullet with a strong verb. Use the past tense for past roles and the present tense for your current role. Be consistent — do not mix tenses within a single role.

File format

PDF is the universal default. PDFs preserve formatting perfectly and parse cleanly through modern ATS systems. Some applications specifically ask for .docx (Word) — only then use that format. Never use .pages or other Apple-specific formats.

Name the file clearly: Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf. Avoid generic names like "resume.pdf" or "resume_v3_final_final.pdf".

Colour: use sparingly or not at all

A small accent colour (a single muted blue, gray, or burgundy for your name and section headings) is fine and can look polished. Heavy colour blocks, multiple accent colours, or coloured backgrounds break ATS parsing and look amateurish. When in doubt, all-black on white is always safe.

Icons and graphics

Skip them. Icons next to skills, progress bars, charts, and graphics all break ATS parsing. The bar chart you used to show "Python: 90%" is invisible to an ATS — and recruiters do not trust self-rated proficiency anyway.

Spacing tips that buy you space without looking cramped

• Reduce line spacing inside bullets to 1.0
• Reduce paragraph spacing between bullets to 4pt
• Reduce margins to 0.75 inches
• Drop articles ("the", "a", "an") where they do not change meaning
• Remove "References available on request" — it is assumed
• Drop generic skills like "Microsoft Office" once you are mid-career

The acid test

Print your resume. Hand it to someone who does not know your field. Ask them to read it for 30 seconds, then tell you what you do and your strongest accomplishment. If they can answer in one sentence, your formatting is working. If they cannot, the layout is failing — usually because the visual hierarchy is wrong, the bullets are too long, or the most important content is buried.

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