Install FontSwap
A resume is read twice: once by software that doesn’t care what font you used, and once by a person who spends about eight seconds on it before deciding whether to spend eighty.
Optimise for the second reading. The first one has simpler requirements than people think.
Six that work
| Font | Character | Weights | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Source Sans 3 | Neutral, professional | 200–900 variable | Almost anything |
| Lato | Warm, humanist | 100/300/400/700/900 static | Corporate, general |
| IBM Plex Sans | Technical, distinctive | 100–700, 7 static cuts | Engineering, product |
| EB Garamond | Classical, literary | 400–800 variable | Academic, law, editorial |
| Libre Baskerville | Traditional serif | 400, 700 static | Conservative industries |
| Inter | Modern, screen-first | 100–900 variable | Tech, design, startups |
All free, all commercially licensed, all installable locally so you can set the document in Word, Pages or InDesign rather than fighting a web tool.
Matching the font to the industry
This is the only part of the decision with any real signal in it.
Conservative fields — law, finance, academia, government. A serif reads as established and careful. EB Garamond set at 11pt is close to ideal for an academic CV; it’s economical with space and unmistakably literate. Libre Baskerville is sturdier and better if your CV will be printed and photocopied — it has thicker strokes and survives degradation.
Technology and product. Inter or IBM Plex Sans. Plex in particular signals a certain fluency — it’s IBM’s corporate face and it’s recognisably chosen rather than defaulted to, without being showy.
Design and creative. You’ll be judged on the typesetting more than the typeface. Any of these will do; the spacing, alignment and hierarchy are what’s being assessed.
General corporate, unclear industry. Source Sans 3 or Lato. Neither will ever be the reason you didn’t get an interview.
The applicant tracking system question
There’s a lot of anxiety about this and most of it is misplaced.
Modern ATS software parses the text layer of your document. It reads the characters, not the glyph shapes. A PDF set in EB Garamond and a PDF set in Arial contain identical text as far as the parser is concerned.
What actually breaks ATS parsing:
- Text inside images. A beautifully designed header saved as a graphic is invisible to the parser. Your name has to be real text.
- Multi-column layouts. Parsers read in document order, and a two-column resume can interleave your job titles with your skills list into nonsense.
- Tables for layout. Same problem, worse.
- Headers and footers. Some parsers skip them entirely. Never put contact details there.
- Unusual file formats. Send PDF or
.docx. Nothing else.
Font choice is not on that list. Set the font you want, and fix the structure.
One genuine caveat: if you submit a .docx and the reviewer opens it without your font installed, Word substitutes and your careful one-page layout becomes one and a bit pages. PDF avoids this entirely. Send PDF unless explicitly asked for Word.
Sizes and spacing
The formatting matters more than the font, and it’s where most resumes actually fail:
- Body text 10–11pt for serifs, 10–10.5pt for sans-serifs (sans faces have larger x-heights so they look bigger at the same point size)
- Line height 1.15–1.3. Tighter than this looks cramped; looser wastes the page
- Name at 18–24pt, section headings at 12–14pt — use weight, not just size
- Margins no less than 0.5 inch. Below that it reads as desperate to fit
- One font family. Use its weights for hierarchy. Two families is acceptable if one is a serif for the name and headings; three is never right
If you’re one line over a page, fix it with margins, line height, or cutting a bullet — not by dropping to 9pt. Nobody has ever been hired for fitting more words on the page.
What to avoid
Times New Roman and Calibri aren’t bad fonts; they’re default fonts, and a reviewer who sees a hundred resumes a week reads them as “no decision was made.” That’s a small signal but it’s free to avoid.
Anything with personality is a larger risk than it seems — a script, a display face, a rounded geometric. The resume is not the place to demonstrate range.
And avoid setting your name in a different font from everything else. It’s a common instinct and it consistently looks like two documents glued together.
FAQ
Serif or sans-serif for a resume? Either works. Serif reads as traditional, sans as contemporary. Match the industry, and if you can’t tell, use a sans.
Should I use a template? Templates from design sites are frequently multi-column and heavy on graphics — the two things that break parsing. A single-column document you set yourself is safer and usually looks better.
Is 9pt ever acceptable? For a printed academic CV running to several pages, marginally. For a one-page resume, no — it reads as content you couldn’t bear to cut.
Can I use different fonts for my name and body? You can, and it’s the one place a second font is defensible. Keep it to a serif/sans pairing with clear intent, not two similar sans-serifs that look like an accident.