With Fred Coon
December 9, 2003 – 20 Pet Peeves Recruiters Have About Resumes
Courtesy of Mike Worthington, ResumeDoctor.com
# 14 – Poor Font Choice
When creating your Word Attachment resume, keep your font simple and easy to read on a computer screen. Be kind to your reader. Do not use italics or extremely difficult to read fonts like Edwardian Script. Font size is just as important as style. 8-point fonts are too small to read, even for Superman.
Microsoft seems to have settled on 10 point Arial as their default font in most of their applications. People are accustomed to reading such on their computer screen. For headings, recruiters shared that 12-point bolded is the best choice.
Recruiters told us that that second best choice is Times Roman as every newspaper and magazine is printing with such. Once again, people’s eyes are accustomed to reading text in this font. However, 10-point Times Roman, (unlike Arial), is too small for a computer screen. It is recommended if you choose Times Roman, use 11 or 12 point. If a resume is difficult to read, a recruiter will simply move onto the next one.
Recruiter’s likes and dislikes in a resume were surveyed nation-wide by Mike Worthington of ResumeDoctor.com. FACE to FACE will publish all twenty pet peeves in this column over the next months.
ResumeDoctor.com is a service provided by Personnel Department Inc. PDI is Vermont’s largest independently owned staffing agency. They have been locally owned and operated for over 14 years. They have been featured in many publications, TV news programs, and radio broadcasts. You may contact them at: http://www.resumedoctor.com.