If you want to increase your chances of securing the job you want, getting your potential employer’s attention should be one of your primary concerns. However, there’s a thin line between getting someone’s attention and making an unprofessional appearance, so it’s important to follow the latest Resume format and its formatting standards if you want to know what you’re doing. Here are 5 of them to start with:

Icons are a Unique and Creative Way To Segment The Content

Being smart with your icon choices will allow you to structure the content of your resume in such a way that it’s nicely organized, easy to navigate, and attention-grabbing at the same time. All the while, it won’t appear unprofessional, at least if you pick your icons right. Making sure that similar styling is applied to all of them helps a great deal.

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Style Your Resume as an Infographic

Infographics have truly been getting some traction in the recent years. And it’s for a good reason too; by using well-placed visuals, it’s easy to make a resume template with a lot of work experience appear presentable. All that’s really needed is to pick a design and enhance it with icons, images, and carefully-organized facts about your professional life. Thankfully, there are several online infographic and template generators out there for you to try, so you can produce an infographic even if you aren’t a graphics designer.

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Your Font Choices Can Help You Make a Good First Impression

How do you stand out from the rest of the pack if most of your competitors are using the plain old and boring Times New Roman or Arial as their main fonts of choice? And no, Comic Sans is not the answer for obvious reasons (unless you believe making them think you’re a 10-year-old will help you get hired). Instead, consider using professional-looking, yet still unique fonts like Sans Serif.

Use Bolding When Necessary to Highlight the Most Important Bits and Pieces of Data

By bolding the parts of your resume, you want the reader to notice (this is most commonly used to emphasize individual words found in the content), you’ll be able to make your CV much more readable and better-flowing. On a similar note, use bullet points when applicable, since it helps accomplish the same thing. You see, your potential employer likely doesn’t have an infinite amount of time every day to process all the job applications roaming in, so resorting to speed-reading techniques like skimming becomes essential. This allows them to spend their energy much more productively by being able to read as many resumes as possible within a small time-frame. 

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Cleverly Interweave Some Commonly Searched Keywords Into Your Writing

While not directly related to formatting per se, it’s a powerful technique you can use to get noticed much faster than what’s typically the norm. The reason being is that to re-iterate the point we made in the previous paragraph, the employers don’t have an unlimited time on their hands to process every job application manually. That’s why some of them resort to using modern technologies that help them automate the process, and scanning the resumes for keywords relevant to the job position is just one way they’re being able to accomplish this. The good news is that you can use this knowledge to your advantage and include them whenever feasible (you must, however, avoid keyword stuffing at all costs – the key is to make them appear as natural as possible).

Conclusion

By following these 5 modern CV formatting principles, you’re already one step closer to reaching your career goals. No matter what you do, don’t forget to study what other creative resume writers are doing and use what you’ve learned to enhance your own resume.

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