4 Mistakes Job Seekers Make With Their Resume Templates

4 Mistakes Job Seekers Make With Their Resume Templates

One of the key components to building your resume is finding a good template. The average hiring manager will spend only a few seconds reading your resume before deciding whether to give it a closer look. If you choose the wrong template, you are going to quickly have your resume ignored and will badly hurt your chances of finding employment.

What Makes a Template the “Wrong” One?

There is always going to be a subjective component to reviewing resumes. Some hiring managers may want something a bit more modern. Others may appreciate something classic. You have to make the best choice you can with what little information you have.

But while there is no perfect template, there are template “mistakes.” The following are mistakes you will want to avoid with your resume template selection:

• Choosing An Art Piece – The best resume template is one that is easily ignored. You want your resume to be noticed, but you also want to make sure that your achievements speak for themselves. Those that select resumes with bright colors, fancy borders, and other distracting elements are going to make it harder for a hiring manager to evaluate their real talent.
• Choosing the Wrong Style Resume – In most cases, you want some variation of a chronological resume. There are other types of resumes, including skill based/functional resumes, but unless you have a very good reason to choose that style, you want to stick with the standard chronological resume, or at least a close variation.
• Choosing a “Busy” Resume Template – With only a few seconds provided to each resume, you need a resume template that is easy to skim. It should have a clear, simple font, good spacing, and a design that makes it easy to find your best attributes. If you look at it and it appears to have too much going on at once, it may not be the right template for you.
• Choosing an Unprofessional Template – Similarly, any template you choose should look like it was created by a professional. It is generally not a good idea to create a resume template from scratch yourself unless you have a background in design, because you want the template to look like one that a business professional would use.

In addition to selecting the wrong template, many job seekers edit templates to try to fit in as much information as they can, shrinking the font size, decreasing spacing, and more. While it is acceptable to edit resume templates, you have to also make sure that your edits are not making it difficult to review your attributes and achievements.

The best resume templates are the ones that play no role in the hiring process, and provide an excellent first impression to the hiring manager. If your resume template is professional, clean, and easy to read, you’re going to give yourself a better opportunity to land the job.