Formatting is not decoration. It is the delivery system for everything else on the page. A recruiter spends seconds on a first skim, and an applicant tracking system reads the file in a fixed order, left to right, top to bottom. If either reader has to work to find a job title, a date, or a skill, the content underneath never gets its chance. Get the structure right first, and the wording has something solid to stand on.
The short answer
If you change nothing else, use these defaults. Every section below explains why, and where you can move within the range without harm.
Layout: one column, real selectable text, no text boxes, tables, or graphics carrying information.
Margins: one inch on all four sides; narrow to 0.75 inches only to pull a strong page back to one page, never below 0.5 inches.
Font: one plain font throughout: Arial, Calibri, Georgia, or Times New Roman.
Sizes: your name largest (18 to 24 points), section headings a step larger than body text (13 to 16 points, bold), body text and bullets at 10 to 12 points, never below 10.
Spacing: single line spacing inside entries, with a clear gap before each section heading and a smaller, even gap between jobs.
Length: one page for most candidates, two when the experience justifies it, as covered in how long a resume should be.
Nothing here is exotic, and that is the point. The safest resume is the one both readers already know how to read.
Start with one column of real text
Two-column layouts look polished in a design tool and cause trouble everywhere else. Parsers typically read left to right across the whole page, so a sidebar of skills can land in the middle of a job entry, or a date can attach itself to the wrong role. A human skim has the same problem in reverse: eyes jump between columns instead of following one story. The case for single-column resumes is set out in full in why single-column resumes win, and it holds even for experienced candidates with a lot to fit in.
Real text matters as much as the column count. If your resume is an image, a scanned page, or a PDF exported from a design tool that flattened the text into shapes, a parser reads nothing at all. Test it in ten seconds: open the exported file, try to select a sentence with your mouse, and paste it into a plain text document. If the pasted text comes out in reading order, with job titles, dates, and bullets intact, the file passes. If it comes out scrambled or empty, the format is the problem, not the wording.
The same rule kills text boxes, headers and footers used for content, and tables used for layout. A parser may skip header and footer text entirely, which is a bad place to discover that your name or contact details lived there. Keep your name and contact details as ordinary body text at the top of page one.
Margins: start at one inch, treat 0.5 inches as the floor
One-inch margins on all four sides are the standard for a reason: they leave enough white space for the page to breathe, and they keep text clear of printer and scanner edges. Career guides from universities including Rutgers and Nebraska-Lincoln give the same range, half an inch to one inch, and the advice is consistent: start at the wide end.
Narrow the margins only after you have tightened the wording. If a strong resume runs a few lines over one page, dropping to 0.75 inches is a reasonable fix. Going below 0.5 inches is not: text near the edge risks being clipped in print and in scanned copies, and the page starts to look crowded, which makes a recruiter skim faster rather than slower. And keep all four margins equal. Asymmetric margins, one side squeezed while the others stay wide, are the clearest sign a resume was forced onto one page, and a reader notices even without knowing why the page feels off.
Paper size follows the same logic. Use Letter size when applying in the United States or Canada and A4 in most other countries, including the UK. A mismatch is rarely fatal, but a Letter resume printed on A4, or the reverse, can shift margins in ways you did not plan.
Fonts: one plain font, sized in a clear hierarchy
Pick one font and use it from the top of the page to the bottom. Two fonts usually look like a mistake, and a decorative font costs readability for no gain. The safe list is short: Arial, Calibri, Georgia, Times New Roman, and close relatives such as Cambria, Helvetica, Garamond, and Verdana. They are safe because they are installed everywhere and because parsers handle them without surprises.
Size creates the hierarchy that lets a skim work. Your name is the anchor, at 18 to 24 points in bold. Section headings sit a step above body text, at 13 to 16 points in bold, or in capitals. Job titles and entry headings sit between body and section size. Body text and bullets stay at 10 to 12 points. Fonts differ in how large they look at the same point size, so start at the top of the body range, 11 or 12 points, and size down only if your font runs large and the text still reads comfortably on screen and on paper.
Never go below 10 points for body text. Smaller type is not a clever way to fit more in; it is a signal to the reader that the resume has too much in it, and it punishes anyone reading on a phone or a printed copy. If 10-point text still does not fit, the answer is cutting content, not shrinking type. Use bold for headings and job titles, keep italics and underlining to a minimum, and use black text with at most one dark accent colour. Colour that carries meaning, such as a skill level shown only by a coloured bar, is invisible to a parser and to anyone printing in black and white.
Spacing: the gaps do as much work as the words
White space is what makes a dense page scannable. Four gaps matter, and they should each do a different job. Leave the largest gap before each section heading, so the eye can see where one block ends and the next begins. Keep the gap after a heading, before its first line, tight, so the heading stays attached to its own content. Leave a moderate, even gap between jobs inside a section. Keep bullets close together, so a wrapped bullet reads as one item rather than two.
Line spacing inside entries should be single, or up to 1.15. Anything above 1.5 looks like padding on a thin resume and wastes space a second page could have used better. If a page feels tight, open up the gaps between sections first, not every line; section gaps buy readability, while extra line spacing inside bullets just stretches the same content.
Consistency is the test a reader applies without thinking about it. If the gap after one heading is twice the gap after the next, or the space between two jobs changes halfway down the page, the document feels assembled rather than written. Pick one spacing pattern, apply it everywhere, and check it by reading the page at arm's length: the sections should be visible as blocks before a single word is read.
Section order, dates, and bullets: keep the pattern identical
Section order is part of formatting, not just content. The usual order, name and contact details, summary, work experience, skills, education, works for most candidates because it matches the order a reader expects. Put a section higher only when the posting makes it decisive, for example a required certification placed above work experience. Do not reorder sections to hide a weak area; a reader who cannot find work experience where they expect it assumes it is missing, not rearranged.
Dates deserve the same discipline. Use one date format everywhere, month and year for jobs, and put the dates in the same place in every entry, usually at the end of the title line or on the right of it. Mixed formats, one entry with months and the next with years only, force the reader to re-read each line instead of scanning down the column. The same applies to bullet style: one bullet character, one pattern for starting each bullet with a verb, and results stated the same way, as covered in how to write resume bullet points.
One formatting habit to drop: using bold, capitals, and italics all at once to make something stand out. Pick one emphasis per element. A job title in bold is enough. A section heading in bold capitals is enough. Stacking emphasis makes everything shout, which means nothing stands out, and it makes the page harder to scan, not easier.
File format: PDF for sending, DOCX when asked
Send a PDF unless the posting asks for something else. A PDF holds your margins, fonts, and spacing exactly as you set them, on any machine. Some older applicant tracking systems parse DOCX more reliably than PDF, which is why a posting that asks for Word format should be obeyed exactly: a DOCX sent where a PDF was requested, or the reverse, is an unforced error. The full comparison, including what each format does to your layout, is in resume PDF versus Word.
Whichever format you send, export it from the document you actually edited, not from a screenshot or a design export, and run the select-and-paste test from the first section on the exported file. Formatting that survives in your editor but breaks on export is the most common version of this problem, and it is only visible in the file you send.
The five-minute formatting check before you send
Run this check on the exported file, not on the draft in your editor.
- Select and paste. Copy the whole document into plain text. Does it read in order, with titles, employers, and dates intact?
- Skim at arm's length. Can you see the sections as blocks, and pick out each job title and date without reading a bullet?
- Check the edges. Is any text closer than half an inch to an edge, or cut off in print preview?
- Check the hierarchy. Is your name the largest text, headings clearly above body text, and body text no smaller than 10 points?
- Check the file. Is it the format the posting asked for, named plainly, and opening cleanly on a phone as well as a desktop?
If a check fails, fix the format before touching the wording. A check of the ATS score is more useful after the document parses cleanly, because a score on a scrambled file measures the scrambling, not your experience. Tailoring the content to the posting comes next: one resume per job, with the same clean format, rather than one formatted resume stretched across every posting.
What formatting cannot fix
Formatting will not rescue a resume whose content does not match the posting, and it will not hide a gap, a short tenure, or a missing skill. That is not a reason to neglect it; it is the reason to keep it simple. A clean format gets out of the way and lets a recruiter judge the work itself, which is the only judgement that leads to an interview. Spend the time you save on formatting on the harder job: choosing which achievements to show for this posting, stating them with honest numbers, and naming the gaps plainly instead of dressing them up.
Format for the reader you have, not the designer you wish you were. One column, one font, generous margins, and even spacing will carry better content further than any layout trick.