Hiring managers look at scores of resumes and the last thing most want to see is an over-designed and hard-to-read resume. Submit a clean and simple resume so that your work experience and skills shine through and help land you the interview.
We have a variety of free simple resume templates from which to choose. Look through these templates and pick the one that suits your current job search best. Then customize the template with your own skills and experience to reflect what you have to offer as a unique job candidate.
Very compact professional layout. Notice how the use of red text draws the eye in. Just the right amount of color in the right places can be really helpful to the reader.
Neat
Good use of white space gives this professional resume template an open feel while subtle colors add pizazz. Two main sections let you detail your experience and education in reverse-chronological order.
Upfront
Traditional format with light orange headers and subtle gray titles. Great resume template for graphic designers, corporate writers or administrative professionals.
Subtle Creativity
Margin columns for titles and headings provide lots of space for detailed job and skills descriptions. Perfect resume template for business, industrial or vocational professionals.
Broad Appeal
Labor, manufacturing, educational and service industry template. Good use of white space to catch the eye with blue section divider lines and large, bold section titles.
Commencing
Just a bit of color and creative use of indent add a twist to this very traditional straight-forward design. Indented text helps the headings stand out.
Indent Line
Conventional two-page layout with profile photo and red and blue fonts for added design touch. Plus signs used for bullet points. Great resume template for technology, engineering or financial career seekers.
Creative Conventions
Excellent resume template for those with lots of skills and training but not a lot of work experience. Bold headings with vertical divider lines and blue titles create focus for the reader.
Fresh Take
Subtle red titles and block, sans serif fonts give this resume template a stately feel. Great use of white space complements descriptions of your experiences, strengths and objectives.
Stately
Checkbox bullets tick off all of your great career highlights in this two-page resume with blue section divider lines. Excellent resume template for experienced and accomplished professionals.
Accomplished
Two-page template with a two-column layout offers ample space for multiple sections. Light-blue titles and dashed section lines add a punctuated design.
No Point Left Out
Red shadings and gray background really draw in the reader’s eye. Plus signs used for bulleted lists with room for multiple sections.
Bold Red Shading
Small profile picture and thin, blue-shaded headers add design savvy to this classic format with lots of space for summary text and bullet lists. Business, health and IT professionals standout here.
Packed Classic
Thin and thick blue lines define each squared section, and headings in bold, white fonts make this template pop.
Blue Pop
Light brown headings and vertical bright green dashed lines catch the eye and break content into easy-to-read sections. Bold titles bring focus to key experiences and skills. Great resume template for marketing, public relations or communications professionals.
Beaming
Bold, open squares and thin black lines divide the two-column page layout. Dates and keywords offset in the margins act as section intros. Excellent resume template for university and IT job seekers.
Checkmark Timeline
Offset one-column layout with red and orange colors and bold, large headers with paragraph descriptions. Creative resume template with a business feel.
Next Level
Two-page, one-column layout with red and orange for headings and titles. Lots of space for detailed, paragraph descriptions. Corporate and academic feel with this resume template.
Tidy
Section titles offset in the margin with blue and light gray fonts. Small vertical lines used to separate columns. Excellent resume template for those who have been in one industry for several years.
Industry Lifer
Dark black section dividers complement light green and blue text and bullets. Large, three-columned Core Skills section for many key attributes. Serif font completes mature, professional feel.
Cosmopolitan
A traditional format that is clean and elegant. An initialed ribbon provides a smart touch which can be personalized with your initials, your qualifications or your most prestigious award. Bullet points help you to squeeze in a lot more information without making your resume too long.
Elegant Traditional
This simple color block really makes a statement and is the perfect backdrop for the black open-serif text.
Pretty In Pink
Traditional layout with bold and italic fonts. Large red square with white font provides ample space for objective. Great resume template for corporate, IT and nonprofit job seekers.
Bold Red
One look and everyone will know who you are. The placement size and bold text really make your name pop on this resume template.
My Name Is
The use of bold text, simple colors, underlines and spacing makes this template a very easy read.
Simple Underline
Bold section titles with arrow points and light maroon titles lend this resume template a vivid touch. Full-page layout for multiple sections to let you list plenty of information.
Striking
Large and small margins add white space while offering plenty of room for multiple sections. Bold orange and blue titles focus on the reader. Great resume template for entry-level positions or new graduates.
Offset
This block-and-bulleted resume offers a professional-looking style. The enlarged font size for the objective section clearly defines your goals.
Professional Block
Color contrast and different font types dictate the style and impact of this resume. The use of red pulls the reader back to your name.
Simple Red
Easy to scan, one-column template with section and colored title headings in color make your information quick to read. Large Skills & Abilities section make this template great for career changers.
Academia
Plus signs and lines outline each area with arrows providing the bulleted direction to your skills and experience. Scientific, data and IT feel with this one.
Plus IT
Open and airy one-column format centered on the page. Blue headings and bold titles with plus signs and outlined bullets provide subtle design appeal. Service and labor workers, take a look here.
Breezy
Oversized captions for keywords or job titles. Small profile photo with blue-shaded section headers. Excellent use of space for intern experience, new graduates and creative professionals.
Caption It
Want a different way to distinguish your subheadings from your headings? This layout shows how different shades of the same color can do that.
Mono Shading
Light-blue titles, bold headings and carat bullets with good use of white space in this basic resume template. Perfect example for service industry job seekers and labor staff as well as new graduates.
Burgeoning
Simple layout with bold headings and thick lines to separate different sections. Not the best format if you have a lot of information to include.
Simple Central
Offset sections balance out this resume template. Good use of white space helps focus the reader’s eye. Orange titles provide a design element. Great format to take your experience to the next level.
Moving Up
Thin margins with stacked sections provide lots of room for all of your achievements. Unique Projects area lets you describe your accomplishments. Great for IT, project management and senior-level professionals.
Substantial
Thin page border and section divider lines with red and bold, black titles and keywords provide an executive feel. Project managers, directors and senior VPs can do well with this template.
Top Level
A compact resume format that draws the reader’s eye to the important information across different sections.
In A Nutshell
Two well-defined columns give this resume template structure. Thick, orange-colored bar graphs make your capabilities pop on the page, and the italicized, muted-gray job titles add to the professionalism.
Raise The Bar
Conventional sections with blue headers and light gray arrows and open circular bullets point all of your strengths and skills. Plenty of room for goals, keyword lists, and more.
Space It Out
A very smart style that gets straight down to business. Summarize your abilities into a couple of sentences. Most prospective employers don’t have a lot of time to read through lengthy resumes, and this template makes your information appear clean and concise.
Classic Elegance
Great use of contrasting text color and line thickness to differentiate between sets of information.
Section Lines
Small margins and thin gray-shaded headings with white fonts offer lots of room in this example. Multiple sections for your training, certifications, skills and other information.
Traditional Plus
Just a bit of color goes a long way in breaking up information.
No-Nonsense
Bold, black headings and section dividers with light-gray lines for bullets and blue font for your name give this traditional template personality.
Nontrational Trational
Bold headings and shading flush out this template with plus signs and open circles for bullet points. Good skills resume template for those with lots of experience and training outside the workplace.
Skilled
Complementary colors for your personal information, and the section headings catch the eye. Simple bullet list in each section offers a straightforward, no-nonsense approach
Career Starter
Gray shading and colorful section headers give this modern resume a bold and confident air. Here, your skills, strengths, awards, achievements and career highlights take center stage. This resume template lends a decisive and authoritative tone, while not being overbearing or fussy. This is a perfect template for individuals seeking to change careers or industries, and ex-military looking to enter the civilian workforce.
Bulletin
Free modern resume template that will get you noticed. Simple, elegant and discreetly modern, with a touch of color and creativity.
Discreetly Modern
Standard Europass CV Template. In Europe, and for some academic posts worldwide, a CV is preferred over a resume and generally contains more information. This is a classic, clean CV template that will give you the edge when applying to work with a university or European company. Plenty of space to make a good impression.
Europass CV Template
Very classy and professional full-page two-column resume template. Lots of space included for key skills, awards and attributes. Red and blue titles add a touch of color. Great example for those with substantial work experience.
Firm
Two-column layout with profile photo. Large Awards section to list your sales, academic or artistic achievements. Great resume template for advertising, creative, sales or communication professionals.
Award Winner
Two-column layout with sections styled into various columns. Light-gray divider lines and red and blue titles. Stylish with a corporate feel for marketing directors, senior VPs and principal managers.
Aristocratic
Classic layout with a high-end executive feel. Great use of bordered headings, indented bullets and tabbed text to create an elegant, professional look.
Executive Elegant
A round portrait option makes this resume template a bit different. A strong opening statement in bold lettering is great for impact, and makes the reader want to find out more about you. At the end of the resume a simple scale allows you to give a snapshot of your levels of competence.
Bold Simplicity
Bold headings shaded with olive and dark greens for a sophisticated template. Managers, administrators, directors and accountants take advantage of the three-columned skills area and oversized sections for experience, certificates and licenses.
Polished
Two-column format offers lots of section areas. Light grays for headers and dashed section dividers as well as shaded background to highlight key work experience.
Split Page
Functional two-page resume template with three-column core skills lists and areas for professional experience, work history and more. Great template for those looking to switch industries.
New Agenda
Checkmarks for bullets with blue, green and gray fonts catch the eye. Underscores connect job titles to dates. Analysts, developers, academics or health care professional’s template.
Check It Off
Deep and light-blue headers with bold font titles add pop to this traditional resume template. Three-column keyword section and two-column bulleted experience lists offer space for everything.
Airy Traditional
Want the focus to be on your opening statement? This resume template does just that. Make your pitch for this job a real eye-opener.
Inverse
Two-column design with block-paragraph descriptions. Light blues and grays for headers, dates and titles. Excellent template for business, IT, administrative or counselling.
Solid Segments
A simple resume doesn’t need to be a boring one. In fact, a simple resume format requires a lot of attention to detail because it should be both eye-catching, and tailored to your experience and desired job.
It can be more traditional or more trendy, depending on which template you use. All of our templates here have clean, minimal layouts, but there’s a lot of design variation within the simple resume format. Choose the template that suits your personality and work history best.
If you’re applying to a conservative place of employment, a simple resume is the way to go.
The legal and financial fields are examples of conservative workplaces. If the job you want has a professional dress code, you should probably use a clean resume format. Look at it as a dress code for your resume.
While a simple resume design is essential in traditional types of workplaces, a well-crafted simple resume can also impress a potential employer in a creative, modern field.
If you’re going for a job where design is important, then knowing how to use clean design elements without fancy fonts or borders can actually make your resume stand out.
Font, formatting, color scheme and use of white space contribute to an attractive simple resume. This minimal style requires solid design knowledge.
If you’re applying to a newer company, the employer may also be impressed by a clean and modern resume, even if the corporate culture is more laid-back. Many startups and tech companies use a minimalist aesthetic for their offices, websites and products. You can show you’re a good fit by reflecting that same aesthetic in your resume.
What information you include on your simple resume should reflect the details of the desired position and the job description. Study the language used in the job description and try to echo back the key phrases and action words, where applicable to your experience, throughout your resume. The hiring managers are telling you exactly what they want – you need to assure them that you can deliver.
Here are the sections that you should always include on your resume:
Here are some optional sections you could include:
Your resume should have the minimum number of sections necessary to showcase your abilities as a job candidate. Keep it brief. Omit unnecessary information.
Now that you’ve decided what sections to include, it’s time to format them into a simple resume using these four key tips:
1. Avoid large blocks of text in your resume.Having white space between sections adds balance and aids readability. If a section on your resume involves a list (such as a “Skills” section), you’ll want to choose a template with bullet points. These make your resume organized and easy to read.
2. Choose clean fontsThere’s nothing wrong with a classic font like Times New Roman, but a simple resume often looks better with a clean, modern, sans-serif font like Helvetica, Arial, Calibri or Verdana.
3. Use color wisely:If you choose to use color to make your resume pop, use it sparingly. Pick just one or two colors to highlight aspects of your resume. For example, you might choose a conservative color, like gray or dark blue, for your resume header.
Make sure any font color you choose is easy to read. Avoid pink, yellow and lighter shades. They look unprofessional and are hard to see.
4. Be consistent:Have your Objective header in the same font, color and size as the rest of your resume headers, for example. Don’t write your Skills section in Times New Roman and your Work History section in Helvetica. If you make the resume sections bold or underlined, make sure they’re all written that way. Keep the style cohesive.
The following are common resume mistakes to avoid:
If your resume is over-designed or messy, employers will be distracted from the content and more likely to take a pass on your document. A really over-the-top resume might even be automatically discarded by an applicant tracking system (ATS) before it gets read by a hiring manager.
Once you’ve chosen a simple resume template, it’s time to write your unique content. If you’ve never written a resume before, use our detailed resume guide, or our Resume Builder to help you get started.
Keep in mind that most job applications will also require a cover letter that works in tandem with your resume.
If you’re interested, Hloom’s builder also comes with cover letter assistance to make that whole process take just a few quick minutes. Get started now to produce high-quality hiring documents that get your noticed by employers!
