We have many excellent modern resume templates from which to choose to create your own unique resume. From clean to creative and everything in between, all of our modern resume templates are free for you to download, edit and print. Take a look at these examples, then use our advice below to fill in your chosen template with your personal information.
Busy hiring managers and recruiters won’t spend much time with your resume before deciding whether or not to discard it, so design is very important.
A modern resume should be easy to read and attractively designed. Here are some of the major design elements to consider in a modern professional resume.
Looking for something even more creative? See our infographic resume template library.
On modern resumes, fonts are important.
Historically, Times New Roman was the default choice for resumes. On a modern resume though, this old-fashioned font can be seen as outdated, even boring.
To impress a modern employer, a modern sans serif font is best. Avoid overused fonts like Arial, and choose a more interesting option, like Helvetica Neue or Georgia. Georgia is a particularly good choice as it was designed to be easily read on a screen.
Color is a good way to make your modern resume shine. Now that resumes are often sent to employers online, the expense of color printing is avoided.
When using color, keep the palette simple and professional. You might color only your section headers, or you could choose a template with a colored design from our options above.
Always use colors that are easy to see. Darker colors, like navy and burgundy, will look best for text. Light colors, like yellow, are too difficult to read, and look unprofessional.
A hiring manager probably isn’t going to read your resume from top to bottom until after you’ve made it through the initial selection process. They often make those early decisions in a matter of seconds.
Find ways to highlight your key information to help guide those who are just skimming resumes. You might use bold fonts to highlight your major achievements, or color to draw the eye to the sections you want noticed first.
White space on your resume allows for easy skimming, so don’t stuff your resume with excess information. Use bullet points if you’re making a list of achievements, for example.
If there’s a common acronym or abbreviation for a term in your industry, be sure to spell it out at least once in your resume, in case the person reading your resume is not familiar with the abbreviation.
One page resumes are great, but modern resumes are often longer.
A two-page resume could be appropriate if you have a lot of work experience. Employers would rather read a multi-page professional resume than a one-page resume that’s crammed with information in a tiny font.
What’s important is to make sure that everything on your resume is essential. Two pages of relevant information is good; two pages of filler is not. The general rule is that you should have around one page on your resume for every ten years of work experience.
Your modern resume will contain the same sections that would go on any resume, such as contact information, work experience and education. However, a modern design must feature this information in a way that’s helpful to a modern employer. Today’s employers are likely to be reading your resume online rather than on paper, and may want details that you wouldn’t see on a traditional resume like links to a digital portfolio or your LinkedIn profile. In this section, we’ll discuss what modern employers are looking for and how to write your resume accordingly.
Add hyperlinks to your relevant social media pages, and include your email address on your resume, suggests Wendy Enelow, who co-wrote “Modernize Your Resume: Get Noticed ... Get Hired.” This makes it easy for an employer or recruiter to contact you.
If you have a detailed and thorough LinkedIn account, hyperlink it in your Contact Information section. If you’re applying for a job that will involve social media use, such as corporate online reputation management, include links to your other social media accounts, too, like Twitter and Instagram.
Make sure to keep your social media accounts professional and polished. They should be actively used, have high-quality, work-appropriate profile pictures, and be filled with content that employers will want to see.
In addition to social media, the rest of your contact information should be modernized, too.
For instance, a modern resume doesn’t need your full residential address. Include just your city, state and ZIP code.
If you have a personal website, published writing samples or an online portfolio, link that in your Contact Information section, as long as it’s relevant to your desired job.
Objectives are considered outdated in a modern resume. It can be assumed that an employer or recruiter already knows what your objective is, since they have your resume in their hands.
Instead you may want to include a professional summary that states what you have to offer the employer as a candidate, instead of what you’re looking for. This is an especially good idea if you have a long work history.
Your professional summary should be a synopsis of your job history and could include your years of experience, job history highlights and major accomplishments.
Some jobs, like medical assisting, require a specific skill set that should go in a Skills section. For a job that doesn’t require such specific knowledge, don’t have a Skills section, and list your achievements instead.
Achievements don’t generally need their own separate section, unless you have a lot of measurable achievements to list. You can work them into your Experience or Work History section.
Get rid of the list of duties performed, and tell recruiters about things you accomplished or skills you mastered at each past job. If you can include specifics or numbers, that’s even better. Write the name of the new software you learned, or the percentage by which you increased sales at your last job.
Many large companies will use a software program to screen resumes. These applicant tracking systems (ATS) weed out resumes that appear to be a poor fit for the job.
There are a number of proven tactics for making your resume ATS-friendly. Check out our ATS resume templates and writing guide for more details, and get your modern resume past these automatic systems and into the hands of hiring managers.