A Feast for the Eyes: The Modern Resume

With the ease of online job applications, Human Resource departments are inundated with endless resumes and cover letters. How will your resume stand out in the pile? Put yourself in the shoes of the HR representatives: they face a pile of bland, generic, outdated resumes that look about as appetizing as gas station sushi. You want a resume that stands out. Your resume needs to be HR filet mignon. Or a hearty tofu cutlet for you vegetarians.

But how do you get your resume to become a feast for the eyes? A stand-out resume is all about presentation. Just as a chef thinks about how to plate a dish beautifully, all of us here at CareerLaunch think about how to “plate” your resume so that it is sure to catch the eye of the HR team reviewing it. These days, Adobe InDesign is the best way to provide panache to your application. Adobe InDesign allows professionals to create dazzling brochures, magazines, articles, resumes, and more with its industry leading tools and features. At CareerLaunch we use Adobe InDesign to turn your job search from pie in the sky into a piece of cake.

One of the first elements of a resume that will stand out to a potential employer is the overall layout. To return to our cooking metaphor, no one wants to eat a lumpy pile of food on a plate. Neither do HR departments. Your resume needs to look clean and sharp like an entrée from a three-Michelin-star restaurant. Using Adobe InDesign and a team of graphic designers, we combine text, color, and alignment to craft a truly unique and visually-balanced resume.

A second and equally important aspect of a stand-out resume is the font. Banish Papyrus, Curlz, and Chalkboard from your word processor. Even old standards like Times New Roman or Arial are officially fonts of the past, and not in a cool, retro-hipster way. Times New Roman, though fine for academic writing, is often dubbed “the sweatpants of fonts;” comfortable, familiar, and well-worn, but not something to show up wearing for a job interview. If you wouldn’t don sweats for a job interview, why should your resume? Your font should reflect you and the job you are applying for. For design-based jobs, clean cut, sans serif fonts work well. Other types of jobs will prefer a more traditional look with a serif font perhaps, but we can help you navigate the world of fonts to find a flavor profile that represents you. If we were helping Chef Julia Child and Chef Guy Fierri make resumes, we would definitely find different fonts for their respective French home cooking and rock-and-roll cooking styles. At CareerLaunch, we will find you a font that looks both professional and representative of your personality as an applicant.

Finally, how you arrange the information on your resume is important; balance and a strategic use of white space are key for making a resume easy on the eyes. Great chefs rarely use up the whole serving dish; they arrange the food to employ the neutral space in visually pleasing ways. A quality resume relies on quality over quantity. Would you take your spouse to Golden Corral on your 10th anniversary? We hope not! You book a reservation at that chic tapas joint your significant other has been name-dropping for months; less food, but boy, is it to die for! The CareerLaunch team takes your most recent and relevant work experience and displays it on the page in a way that is eye-catching and easy to read; less is more, as long as the less is done with finesse. As practitioners of this delicate art form, we assure that your future employer will be immediately impressed with your curriculum vitae.

Enough of the convenience store corn dog resumes and half-baked cover letters! Take your job search to CareerLaunch, the Cordon-Bleu of Career Search Specialists; we are sure to dish up the job of your dreams.

About The Author

Jason Brown
Founder and CEO

Jason started CareerLaunch after spending too many years in jobs that didn’t inspire him. When his application to star in the much anticipated Friends reboot was rejected, he began searching for work that meant something—and so, CareerLaunch was born. His expertise, passion, and personal drive keep the wheels turning and CareerLaunch growing. Jason is the go to for career development, job search, and interview advice. Connect with Jason on LinkedIn.