I am helping my granddaughter write her resume and we have a basic question.
Is Times New Roman (TNR) considered the appropriate font to use? Is 11 pt. size too small? We have experimented between 12 pt. and 11 pt. on TNR and the former looks a bit large.
Heidi is applying to a small firm with fewer than 15 employees and little turnover, so a scannable resume does not seem necessary. (We also know the owner.)
Oh, and what is the difference between a resume and a CV?
Thank you.
I think TNR is fine, especially since it is so ‘default.’
However, if you use MS Word’s Resume Wizard, it uses TNR for “contemporary resume,” garamond for “elegant resume” and arial for “professional resume.”
As for font size, you really want it to fit on one page, with references on a second page. So if it is at 12 and fits, then good for you (Bad for her tho. What has she been doing with her life? 
j/k) I have mine set at 10 because that’s the lowest I wanted to take it. I ended up trimming up the grammar enough to squeeze it in.
Anyway, most important things for a resume:
One page for everything, references on second page.
Don’t make it wordy. Nobody cares.
Use a passive voice, don’t say “I did this…”
Good luck!
It is also not unusual to use a serif typeface such as TNR for the body while using a simple sans serif typeface such as Arial (bold) for headings. A curriculum vitae is a detailed inventory of lifetime endeavors and accomplishments and is not something generators of such attempt to limit to one page, while a resume gives a quick overview of a candidate in succint form.
Son of a gun! I bumped into a how-to page here (requires Adobe Acrobat).
Be very conservative about the use of adjectives in a resume. It is often an experience in self-discovery to compose one’s resume. I believe stressing one’s accomplishments and abilities while shunning adjectives aids the process.
This causes me to ponder the fact that, while I’ve maintained what I believe have been good resumes for nearly thirty years now, I’ve never been asked for one until the job was mine.
Good luck to Heidi! I would hazard the guess that a curriculum vitae is not something she needs to worry about, but I don’t truly know. What sort of position is she interviewing for?
beatle wrote
This is particularly excellent advice. Don’t talk about what you did; talk about what you accomplished.
Really, the font doesn’t matter a bit, as long as it’s readable. And two pages is fine, but don’t go beyond that.
CV stands for CURRICULUM VITAE which is just the posh way Brits refer to a resume. In my experience there is no difference.
Curriculum Vitea is the latin for the French Resume, which were both adopted into English. Both are valid, although Curriculum Vitea is a much nicer header for your life accomplishments.
Disagreement. I suppose usage might vary from industry to industry and from region to region, but, in my experience, a CV implies a greater level of detail than a resume. For example, my resume runs about two pages; my CV runs about six. The primary difference is that the CV lists all the papers I’ve written and formal presentations I’ve given in a standard citation format; additionally, I’ve included a greater level of detail on my previous positions and classes I’ve taught, etc. Although “CV” and “resume” might be used as synonyms in some circumstances, I’ve almost always seen “CV” used for positions requiring a large amount of formal education (researcher, professor) or a large amount of responsibility (CEO, school superintendant).
And a couple of IMHO observations:
I think that there’s a certain point in one’s career where one’s resume ought to exceed one page. If your granddaughter is applying for an after-school job or a first or second professional job, her resume ought to stay one page. No one’ll read the second page unless she’s applying for a position where some further experience is required.
I’ve found it helpful, when writing or editing a resume, to examine each sentance and ask, “Does this sentance give Company X a reason to hire me?” If the answer is “no,” then I rewrite or discard that sentance.
zut wrote
I always assumed they were exclusively for the former, i.e. for educational positions or positions where lots of education was important. I’m in the business world and have seen at least 1,000 resumes in my hiring years, including ones for high-responsibility roles. I’ve never seen one CV.
Hey! What am I supposed to do if I’ve accomplished nothing? Does this mean I’m doomed to accomplish nothing because until I’d rather of traveled to europe, hung out with friends, and have a lot of sex? A LOT. It was new to me, I was kind of obsessed with it for awhile. So is that it? Am I doomed to soon be on welfare?
Originally posted by ZipperJJ:
Sorry ZipperJJ, but I have to lodge a qualified disagreement on your first and second points, and a complete disagreement on your third.
Point 1: One page for everything if it’s a resume for early in your career. Once you have some work experience and/or some noteworthy achievements, 2 pages is expected. I’ve never been asked for references, but it’s usually acceptable to just include a line like “References available upon request.”
Point 2: Don’t make it overly wordy, to be sure. But definitely say enough to clearly describe what you’ve done. Truncating your accomplishments is a necessary evil, but you should never leave the reader saying, “what the hell does this mean?” Keeping it short is much more important for bullet-point resumes; paragraph resumes should be concise but complete.
Point 3: The first rule of resume writing is to use active verbs. Passive writing is not only bad writing, but it gets resumes thrown in the garbage. You should avoid overusing the “I did X and Y” format, and probably should leave out the “I” when describing your accomplishments. Employers want people who can get things done, and the active voice conveys that ability like nothing else.