Resume best practices, and when to break them
Resume conventions exist because recruiters read hundreds of documents and rely on familiarity to move quickly. Following the convention makes you easy to read; ignoring it makes a reader work. This guide sets out what is actually expected, and where deviating is defensible.
Length
One page is the default for most candidates with under about ten years of experience. Two pages are normal beyond that. Academic CVs, senior research posts and some government applications legitimately run longer, and in those cases brevity is not a virtue.
The useful way to think about length is not a page count but a density question: is every line earning its space? A two-page resume where both pages are strong beats a one-page resume that reached one page by deleting the evidence. Equally, a second page holding four lines looks like poor judgement — either fill it properly or cut back to one.
When you do need to cut, cut in this order: duty-style bullets before outcome bullets, older roles before recent ones, and anything that is not aimed at the job you are applying for. Do not cut margins below about 0.5in, do not go under 10pt body text, and do not remove the white space between sections. A cramped page signals a candidate who could not prioritise.
Choosing a format
There are three structures in general use, and one of them is right for nearly everybody.
Reverse-chronological
Most recent role first, working backwards. This is what recruiters expect, what applicant tracking systems parse most reliably, and what you should use unless you have a specific reason not to. It answers the reader's first question — what are you doing now — immediately.
Functional (skills-based)
Groups your experience by skill area and de-emphasises dates. It is often recommended for career changers and for people with employment gaps, and it should be approached carefully: experienced recruiters know that this format is frequently used to obscure a timeline, and some read it as a warning sign. If your history has gaps, a reverse-chronological resume with the gaps briefly explained usually reads better than a format that hides them.
Combination (hybrid)
A short skills or summary block up top, followed by a conventional reverse-chronological history. This is the genuinely useful middle ground for career changers: the top of the document reframes your background for the new field, and the reader still gets the timeline they want. If you are moving between fields, this is usually the format to choose.
Rule of thumb
Reverse-chronological unless you are changing field, in which case combination. Functional only if you have a considered reason and accept that some readers will be sceptical.
Section order
Order communicates priority. Whatever sits highest is what you are asking the reader to weigh most, so section order should change as your career does.
| Situation | Recommended order |
|---|---|
| Student or recent graduate | Contact → Summary → Education → Projects → Experience → Skills |
| 2–10 years of experience | Contact → Summary → Experience → Skills → Education |
| Senior / 10+ years | Contact → Summary → Experience → Skills → Education → Certifications |
| Career changer | Contact → Summary → Relevant skills → Experience → Education |
| Technical / developer | Contact → Summary → Skills → Experience → Projects → Education |
The most common ordering error is an experienced candidate keeping a full education block at the top out of habit, which pushes their strongest evidence below the fold. If you finished your degree eight years ago, it belongs near the bottom.
Tense, person and voice
Past tense for previous roles, present tense for your current one, and past tense for completed projects even inside a current role. Pick the right tense per role and stay consistent within it.
Person is where most resumes wobble. The convention is an implied first person with the pronoun dropped: "Managed a team of six" — not "I managed a team of six", and definitely not "Priya managed a team of six", which reads as though someone else wrote it about you. Third person is standard in a LinkedIn summary and out of place on a resume.
Use the active voice, and put the verb first:
- Passive: "The migration was completed ahead of schedule by the team I led."
- Active: "Led the migration; delivered three weeks ahead of schedule."
Skip the article at the start of bullets — "Managed the onboarding process" rather than "I was the person who managed the onboarding process". Resume prose is compressed on purpose, and every word you remove makes the remaining ones land harder. Our resume tips guide has more before-and-after examples.
Typography and white space
The layout's job is legibility, and the standards here are genuinely conservative for good reason.
- One font family throughout. Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Garamond, Georgia and Lato are all safe. Two fonts at most if you are pairing a heading face with a body face.
- 10–12pt body text, headings a couple of points larger. Below 10pt you are asking a tired reader to squint.
- 0.5–1in margins. Anything tighter reads as cramped.
- Line spacing of 1.0–1.15, with clear space between sections.
- One accent colour at most, used for headings or rules. Dark grey or navy text on white is the safest body combination and prints reliably.
- Left-aligned body text. Justified text creates uneven word spacing in narrow columns.
- Bold for emphasis, sparingly. Underlining reads as a broken hyperlink; italics for more than a phrase gets tiring.
Design-forward templates have their place — portfolios, design roles, and applications sent directly to a person. For online applications through a company's careers portal, restraint is the better bet, for the parsing reasons covered in the ATS guide.
What to leave out
Every line you remove gives the remaining ones more room. These earn removal:
- "References available on request." Assumed. It has been assumed for thirty years.
- The word "Resume" or "Curriculum Vitae" as a title. The reader knows what they opened.
- Full postal address. City and region is enough; a street address on a document you email widely is an unnecessary privacy exposure.
- Date of birth, marital status, gender, nationality, father's name. Still traditional on some Indian and Middle Eastern resumes, but increasingly stripped by employers to limit bias exposure. Omit unless a specific application asks.
- Photographs for applications in India, the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. Still normal in much of continental Europe.
- Self-rated skill bars and percentages. Unverifiable, and invisible to parsers.
- Salary history or expectations, unless explicitly requested.
- Generic hobbies. "Reading, music, travelling" is filler. A genuinely unusual or relevant interest can be worth a line.
- Every job you have ever held. Compress anything beyond ten to fifteen years into a short "Earlier experience" line.
Regional differences
Conventions are not universal, and applying the wrong region's norms is a common own goal for international applications.
| Region | Convention |
|---|---|
| India | One to two pages. Photographs and personal details are traditional but increasingly dropped. Grades and percentages commonly expected, especially for early-career roles. |
| United States | One page strongly preferred early career. No photograph, no personal details — employers actively avoid them for discrimination reasons. |
| United Kingdom | Called a CV; two pages is standard and accepted. No photograph. A short personal statement is common. |
| Canada / Australia | One to two pages. No photograph. Australian applications often expect more detail than US ones. |
| Germany / much of Europe | Photograph still common. Structured, formal presentation; certificates and references often attached. |
Where an employer states a requirement, follow the employer. A posting that specifies two pages maximum, a particular file format, or a required section is describing the actual rule for that application.
File format and naming
Send a PDF unless asked otherwise. A PDF preserves your layout on every device, which a Word file does not — fonts substitute, spacing shifts, and a carefully built one-page resume can arrive as a page and a half. Send Word only when a posting or a recruiter specifically requests an editable file, which some agencies do because they annotate before forwarding.
Name the file so it is identifiable after download. Priya-Sharma-Resume.pdf works.
resume_final_v3(2).pdf tells a recruiter something about you, and none of it is good. If you are
applying for a specific role and the employer handles many, Priya-Sharma-Resume-Data-Analyst.pdf
is better still.
Conventions handled for you
Our templates already follow the standards on this page — spacing, section order, typography — and export to both PDF and Word from the same document.
Build your resume Browse templatesWhere to go next
If you are starting from a blank page, the resume writing guide walks through each section in order. For line-level rewriting, see resume tips. Before you submit through a company portal, check your file against the ATS resume guide. And if the application asks for a letter, the cover letter guide covers structure and openings.
Frequently asked questions
Is a one-page resume still the rule?
It is the default, not a law. One page is right for most people with under ten years of history. Two pages are entirely normal once you have more relevant experience than fits credibly on one. What is never right is a second page containing only three lines, or a one-page resume achieved by shrinking the font to 8pt.
Should I write in first person or third person?
Neither, mostly. The convention is an implied first person with the pronoun dropped: "Managed a team of six", not "I managed a team of six" and not "Priya managed a team of six". Be consistent — mixing them is the actual mistake.
What tense should I use?
Past tense for previous roles, present tense for your current one. Within your current role, past tense is still correct for completed projects. Consistency inside each role matters more than any single choice.
Do I need a different resume for every application?
You need a targeted resume for every kind of role, not every individual posting. Keep one master version and produce targeted copies by reordering bullets and adjusting the summary. Sending an obviously generic resume is worse than sending nothing to a role you were never going to get.
How far back should my work history go?
Roughly ten to fifteen years of detailed history is plenty for most fields. Older roles can be compressed into a short "Earlier experience" line with titles and employers only. There is no obligation to list a job from twenty years ago in four bullets.
Should I include my grade or percentage?
Include it while it is strong or recent, and whenever the employer asks — many graduate schemes screen on it explicitly. Once you have several years of relevant work, your experience is the stronger argument and the grade can come off.