The Role of Design in Your Resume: Your Personal Brand
Picture this: You walk into a networking event but look down and realize you’re still in your pajamas, you haven’t brushed your teeth or washed your hair, you haven’t even put on shoes! It seems that you’ve shown up detrimentally unprepared, how will you make a lasting impression?
Your resume works the same way. Most, if not all recruiting activities initially happen online. Recruiters don’t get the pleasure of meeting every candidate in person to see how they shine face-to-face; all they get is a resume. You don’t have to be an expert graphic designer to make a stunning resume that will stay in a recruiter’s memory, this is a quick guide on creating your perfect resume with a free website, Canva.
Searching for a Template
Canva offers an overwhelming number of free templates that can be used by anyone. On the home screen of the platform, type “Resume” in the search bar to find your template options. Anything with a gold crown icon is only accessible for premium members, however for only $15 a month I would advise subscribing until you finish your resume so you’re not limited on which features and elements you can use.
Scan the options for a template that best fits your personality and industry – if you’re seeking creative jobs, your resume may be more colorful and complex, for more technical careers, your resume should be more straight-forward and tame. Keep in mind that all elements and colors can be easily changed, you’re just looking for a blueprint to start with. Recruiters like to see originality and creativity in a resume, but not to the point where accessories become distractions, so select a template that is visually appealing, but relatively simple.
Font Selection and Formatting
Stick to simple, easy-to-read fonts like Arial, Calibri, or Helvetica and keep the font consistent throughout your design. Not only is this more straight forward for people to read, but complicated fonts don’t process through applicant tracking systems (ATS). ATS’ search for keywords within a resume, and complicated fonts read as gibberish to the system, so your skills and experience won’t be picked up by many recruiters.
Keep the sizing of your font consistent as well, have one font size for body text, a bigger size for headings, and the largest font size for your name. Inconsistency looks messy, try to avoid it. Be mindful of your font sizes to keep your resume concise and to the point. Your resume should be no longer than two pages, but try and keep it to one.
Use Colors Wisely and Intentionally
Choose a color scheme that reflects the professionalism of your industry. As I mentioned before, more creative roles are more acceptably colorful, technical roles should be simpler.
It’s a good rule of thumb to use your standout colors only for titles, section dividers, and accents. Canva does provide color palettes and many customization options, so if you aren’t comfortable selecting a color scheme, steal one of theirs!
Defining Sections
After titling your resume with your full name, either at the top or bottom of the page list your phone number, email, LinkedIn handle and location – if you’re comfortable putting your address, do it, if not you can just list your city and state.
Organize the rest of your resume into sections: Experience, Education, Skills, Awards and Achievements. You may find it helpful to add section dividers; to do that, search for “line” in the elements section of the Canva workspace. Canva will assist you in making the lines straight, and with equal space between them – pay attention to their boundary line suggestions that appear in purple lines.
Most Canva templates will already have section dividers so you may not have to add them yourself, just fill out your information for the content.
Icons and Graphics
Canva offers a vast library of icons and graphics that you can incorporate into any design. While working on your resume, browse the Elements tab on the left side of your screen in the Canva workspace. You can use small icons as replacements for bullet points, accents for headings, and background elements.
If you want to include background elements on your resume, I urge you to make them as subtle as possible. An easy way to do this is by adjusting the opacity of the element, you can find the Transparency function at the top-right of your workspace, you can use the toggle to adjust the visibility of any selected element.
Visual elements will break up text and make your resume engaging when used within reason. Again, don’t accessorize to the point of distracting.
Content
The content of your resume should not just list mundane job duties, instead it should highlight your career milestones and achievements.
For someone earlier on in their career or just starting out, you can use relevant class projects and coursework to highlight your achievements.
For someone who has career experience, be sure to list out statistics and direct examples of your achievements. Resume readers do not care about your job duties, odds are they already know what they are so listing them won’t help you stand out in any way.
Get Feedback
Utilize your friends, family, mentors, and colleagues for feedback on your resume. If you get shut down for an interview, ask the recruiter what went wrong, they may not always respond but it’s a great way to get honest feedback to learn and grow from.
Off to the Races!
Save your Canva resume as a PDF to ensure that it maintains its formatting across different devices and software.
Remember, your resume’s design should compliment your skills and experience, not overshadow them. With Canva’s creative tools and these tips in mind, even non-designers can create a visually appealing and professional resume. So, get started and make your great first impression with a well-designed resume that is the best reflection of you!