Resume format guide

Length: one page or two, decided by experience

The right length for a resume is the length that fits your relevant experience without padding or cramping. In practice, that gives three clear rules.

• Under 10 years of experience: one page.
• 10 years or more, or a senior/management role: two pages is acceptable and often expected.
• Academic CVs: as long as needed for publications, grants and teaching. Multi-page is standard.

The reason one page is the default is not that longer resumes are worse. It is that most candidates under 10 years use the second page to repeat themselves in different words. Recruiters read the first page carefully and skim the second, so padding actively harms you.

If you are at two pages and struggling to justify the second one, cut it to one. If you are at two pages and genuinely have more relevant material than fits, keep it at two and make sure the most important points are on the first page.

Page size: A4 or US Letter

Use A4 if you are applying in Europe, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Africa, Asia, Australia or South America. Use US Letter if you are applying in the United States, Canada or Mexico.

If you are unsure, A4 is the safe default for international applications. Advoke CV lets you switch between the two before exporting, and both formats keep your layout intact.

Margins: 14mm is a good default

Margins serve two purposes: they give the page a comfortable amount of white space, and they keep the content away from the edges of the paper where printers may clip it. A range of 10–20mm (0.4–0.8in) on every side works well.

• 8–10mm (narrow): fits more content per page, but feels tight and may cause clipping on some printers.
• 14mm (normal): the balanced default. What most Advoke CV templates use.
• 20mm (wide): generous margins, formal feel. Reduces the amount of content that fits on a page.

Do not make the margins asymmetric for no reason. A resume with 20mm on the left and 10mm on the right looks like a mistake, not a design decision.

Fonts: two families, no downloads

The safest fonts for a resume are the ones that ship with every operating system. This means your resume renders identically on the recruiter's screen and in any print pipeline, with no risk of a font substitution changing your layout.

Two families cover almost every resume:

• Sans-serif: Inter, Helvetica, Arial, Calibri, Segoe UI, Roboto. Clean, modern, reads well on screen.
• Serif: Georgia, Times New Roman, Palatino, Garamond, Charter. Warm, editorial, good for academic and long-form resumes.

Pick one family and use it consistently. A resume that mixes three or four fonts looks uncertain. A resume that uses one font, at three or four sizes, looks considered.

Advoke CV uses system font stacks only, so no font is ever downloaded. This is also why your resume looks the same whether you are on a Mac, a Windows PC or an Android phone.

Font sizes and line height

These are the ranges that work for a standard two-page resume in A4 or US Letter. They assume a 14mm margin.

• Body text: 10–11pt. Below 10pt is hard to read on paper; above 11pt wastes space.
• Section headings: 11–12pt, often uppercase and letter-spaced.
• Name at the top: 18–28pt depending on the template. Big enough to anchor the page, small enough not to look like a poster.
• Contact line: 9.5–10pt. Slightly smaller than body text is fine.
• Line height: 1.35–1.55. Below 1.3 feels cramped; above 1.6 wastes vertical space.

These are not arbitrary. They come from typographic practice for printed material: the goal is a page that stays legible when printed at 100% and scanned in under a minute.

Section order

The order of sections should reflect your strongest evidence. The conventional order works for most people, but it is not a rule — it is a default you adjust.

The conventional order for a mid-career resume:

1. Header: name, title, contact details.
2. Professional summary: two to four sentences.
3. Work experience: reverse chronological, most recent first.
4. Education: degrees and institutions.
5. Skills: grouped technical and professional skills.
6. Additional sections: projects, certifications, languages, awards, volunteer work.

The adjustments you might make:

• Students and recent graduates: move education above experience.
• Technical roles: put skills directly after the summary, above experience.
• Executives: put a core-competencies strip before experience.
• Academics: put publications above experience.
• Career changers: put a skills summary or a "Relevant experience" block first.

Reverse chronological is not the only option, but it is usually the best

Three main formats exist:

• Reverse chronological: most recent role first. The default. Works for any candidate with a clear progression.
• Functional (skills-based): groups experience by skill rather than by job. Useful for career changers and for candidates returning after a long gap.
• Combination: a skills summary at the top, followed by chronological history. Works for senior candidates who want both scope and skills visible.

Reverse chronological is the safest choice because it matches what recruiters and ATS parsers expect. Only use functional if you have a specific reason — and be aware that some recruiters read functional resumes as an attempt to hide something, so you must include the dates and roles anyway.

File format: PDF unless asked otherwise

Export as PDF. Every modern ATS platform parses PDF correctly, and PDF preserves your layout exactly as you designed it. Word documents are more fragile — a font substitution on the recruiter's machine can shift every line.

Two caveats:

• If the employer explicitly asks for DOCX, send DOCX. Follow the instructions.
• If you are applying to a very old system or via a portal that specifically rejects PDFs, send DOCX as a fallback. Advoke CV exports PDF; you can always copy your content into a Word document if needed.

Bullet style and count

Use three to five bullets per role. Fewer than three suggests the role was minor; more than five suggests you are listing tasks instead of choosing the most important ones.

Every bullet should follow the same shape: a strong action verb, what you did, and — when you honestly can — a measurable result. Compare:

Dates: format and placement

Put dates on the right side of the entry header, aligned consistently down the page. Use one format throughout: “March 2021 – Present” or “03/2021 – Present”. Do not mix.

Avoid:

• “Mar ’21” or other abbreviations that parsers may not recognise.
• “Spring 2021” or “Q3 2021” — these are ambiguous and often skipped.
• Month-only or year-only formats, unless the role was short (under three months).
• Missing dates entirely. Recruiters interpret a missing date as a gap, and a gap is worse than an explanation.

Colour: safe and often useful

Using colour in a resume is safe as long as you respect two rules:

• Body text should be near-black. Dark navy or charcoal is fine. Grey text is often unreadable when printed.
• Accent colour should be used sparingly. Section headings, a divider under the name and the profile icon are enough. Colour on every bullet is distracting.

A single restrained accent — a yellow rule, a navy heading, a warm gold divider — gives the resume identity without overwhelming it. Advoke CV's templates are built around this principle.

What to leave off a resume

These things are commonly included but almost never help:

• Your date of birth, marital status, nationality or religion (except where legally required or culturally expected).
• Your full postal address. City and country are enough.
• Multiple phone numbers. One is enough.
• An “Objective” statement. Use a professional summary instead.
• References. “Available on request” is the standard line.
• Photos of yourself — unless the country and industry expect them.
• Every job you have ever had. Only the relevant and recent ones.
• Skills you cannot be interviewed on.

The bottom line

Formatting rules exist to keep your content readable. When a rule conflicts with readability — a very short resume that looks empty at one page, or a technical resume that needs three pages of publications — readability wins. Every other time, use the defaults above. They are defaults because they work.