This article will cover how to target the formatting of your CV, important factors to consider and some general guidance on colouring and aesthetic structure.

Understanding your audience

Relating back to our post on identifying the goals of your CV, before going crazy with the formatting, you need to understand the audience of your CV. Sometimes, less is more.

We think that there are three rough categories that the majority of CVs will fall under. Most, will be between the Formal and Mid-tier categories.

Formal

These CVs are typically designed to be sent off to very professional, formal job opportunities. Think of anything within finances, investment banking, law etc. There is little room for creative flare, which is why the small details are even more important with these types of CVs.

Mid-tier

This is the middle ground and where most CVs and applications will fall. Here, there is room for creative flare and some originality when formatting your CV. It is encouraged to make your CV stand out a little and have a few elements of originality. Let your personality flow through with these CVs, but maintain the standard CV structure and file formats.

Design and Arts

Creativity is key here. If you are applying for a role working in the arts, or a role with heavy emphasis on design, your CV had better wow the recruiter. Sending a black and white, formal CV to one of these roles is practically asking to be declined.

Be creative, showcase your skills and don't be afraid to deviate from the norm. Many Design and Arts students actually recreate their CV in more obscure file formats or in alternative destinations. For instance, we have seen many successful design students using portfolios on Behance or Dribbble as primary CVs over their more formal records of employment and education.

Summarised, ensure you cover all of the key information somewhere, but don't limit your creativity. Showcase what it is on offer!

Spacing

Before we get into the more fun stuff like colouring, spacing is often disregarded but is one of the most important factors that dictate how well formatted a CV is.

In design, there is a term known as "Whitespace". Defined as:

"Whitespace (also called negative space) is the area between the elements on a web page (or physical page). These elements typically are images, typography, and icons. It is often used to balance elements on a page by creating a natural flow for the user to navigate through the content."

Put simply, it is empty space.

Why is effective spacing so important?

When dealing with a high intensity, high achieving CV, there is often the temptation to cram as much information as possible onto the limiting recommendation of two pages. This is a really bad idea. If there is too much information and not enough space to balance it out, you are adding unnecessary hinderance for the reader.

As we know, the average time a recruiter will spend reading a CV is a mere 7.4 seconds. You need to give them reason to read on. Not only this, but proper spacing will draw attention to the important information that will genuinely benefit your chances in the process.

Line height

Use a line-height of at the very least, 1.15. Consider increasing the line-height to 1.5. This will give your text some room to breathe.

Spacing after elements

If you are using Word's predefined themes, you will have noticed that Titles and Headings automatically have spacing allocated to them. Typically, this spacing will come after the element. Giving headings breathing room before the text starts.

Leave this spacing alone and if you are not using Word's design themes, consider adding some spacing after your elements. 12pts works well.

This is considerably better than adding an empty line and adjusting the font size for a few good reasons. Firstly, it is difficult to be consistent with that method. Secondly, automatic CV readers will detect many different font sizes and score your CV lower. This could remove you from the process before a human has even seen your CV.

So how do you do it?

Fonts / Typography

First, some basic rules. Your CV should have no more than 2 fonts, and no more than 6 variations of those fonts in total. For instance:

Font 1:

• Regular
• Italics
• Bold

Font 2:

• Regular
• Italics
• Bold

That is, unless you're applying for a design or arts role in which case, you probably know better than us :'). A general rule of thumb is the more typically modern and curvy the font looks, the less professional it may appear. Although there are exceptions.

Some reliable fonts for every type of CV include:

Formal roles:

• Garamond (reliable formal font)
• Franklin Gothic Book (reliable formal-mid-tier font)
• Geneva
• Arial (boring but professional)
• Calibri (boring but professional)
• Cordia New (increase font-size)
• Geeza Pro (similar to Garamond, professional)
• Beirut
• Century

Mid-tier roles:

• Franklin Gothic Book (reliable formal-mid-tier font)
• Avenir (more on the creative side)
• Abadi
• Geneva
• Cordia New (Increase font-size)
• Geeza Pro
• Galvji (very informal, more to creative side).

Design and Arts roles:

• Go crazy.

Example Use Cases

In terms of use case examples, you may decide to use one font simply for your name and the role you are applying for and then another for the rest of the CV. Perhaps Franklin Gothic Book for the title, big, modern and bold. Then Garamond for the content, easy to read and more professional.

One key factor though, be consistent!

If one heading uses one font, and another heading that serves the same purpose uses a different one, consistency across the CV will be ruined.

Colouring

Splitting this into three parts.

Formal:

Unfortunately, you're quite restricted. Typically stick to black, white and grey. Venture out at your risk! However, remember your recruiters are going to be seeing a whole load of black, white and grey. Perhaps add a little flare of colour for accents throughout the CV or for some light structural lines. You can still show a little bit of personality.

Mid-tier:

You have more freedom here, but be careful. Stick to a solid colour scheme.

Typically, a mixture of Black, White, Grey and one other colour of your choice will work well.

For instance, black, white, grey and teal can work really well.

When choosing that additional colour, think of colour psychology. Each colour has a natural response to the human brain, so choose wisely. The image below showcases some of the attributes that each colour holds.

If you're good with design and colouring and want to venture a little further from a four-colour colour scheme, read the following section on palette generation.

Design and Creative roles:

You have upmost freedom and infact, should be putting considerable time and thought to the colouring of your CV. Although again, you are likely to know more than us in this area, we have found some great tools that may be of use to you:

Coolors.co is an awesome colour palette generator. Use this if you're looking for a colour palette to employ throughout your CV. For instance, we generated this moody colour palette with just a few turns:

Structural Formatting

Perhaps the most boring area, but how you format the structure of your page is very important. It will affect how your page is read by automatic CV readers and how it is exported when using different file types, such as PDF.

Here are some basic tips to get the most out of the limited space on your CV.

Columns

Not many people use columns on their CV, but it can be an incredibly effective use of space. Especially for the education and qualifications section. Follow the tutorial below on how to do it:

Making use of Word Design Headings

Making use of the Headings that Word gives with its design themes is a great way to keep your CV consistent. You can edit one heading and the changes will take effect throughout the CV.

Recommended File Formats

We recommend using .docx in scenarios where you can only upload one file for your CV. In scenarios where you can send more than one file, such as an email, send both .docx and PDF. We used this approach for both CVs and Cover Letters.

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