Resume Templates To Use or Not to Use

Resume Templates To Use or Not to Use Last week, I was asked to review a resume from a prospective job seeker, something I do as a service of Feather Communications. Although the resume contained pertinent information related to the job she sought, I felt the resume could have been improved vastly with several formatting changes. And, when I started to work with the text to move it within the page, the truth was revealed: she had used a resume template. Oh, the horror. Okay, that may be a bit dramatic, but that was my thought. When you use a resume template, it is true that it makes it easier to clearly define what information you need and where you may need to place that information. However, trying to change the formatting later on can lead to a massive headache, as things are blocked together in text boxes and are virtually impossible to separate. Many templates also take no heed to consistency and overall formatting. What do I mean by that? Templates allow text boxes that may have one font, a heading that offers another font, and text within the resume that still offers yet another font. The results? Your resume appears very scattered and non-cohesive. The worst part, in my opinion, is that you are very limited in the formatting changes you can make in the future. Each movement of text brings about movement of other text you didn’t mean to move nor did you want to move. My advice is this: use a resume template as a way to gather ideas. Printing out a copy of a template will give you a good idea of which information to include and an approximate order on the page. By starting with a regular, old-fashioned word processing document, you will be saving yourself future crises. By the way, I ended up re-typing all of the text from that job seeker’s resume and placing into a brand-new (non-template) document. It will be more workable for her when she needs to make formatting and text changes. My motto: just say NO to the resume template.