It’s placement sem and time to make those résumés. This document gives a few pointers about

formatting.

One cannot stress enough the importance of formatting. Your content, if not laid out well will not

invite readers. So before you send out your résumé to be proofread by your seniors and batch-

mates, make sure it’s well revised and formatted. It saves a lot of effort on both your and the

proofreader’s part and results in lesser iterations. I assume you have brainstormed enough and

have all the information ready to be well laid out.

1. Starting off:

(i) You can choose between the ever-popular MS Office Word 2007 and the not-as-

cumbersome-if-you’ve-used-it LATEX. This document will give as general fundae as

possible though a few things might be MS Word specific.

(ii) If you use Word 2007, you can choose to make your resume as a Table as well. You

can view Gridlines from the View tab.

(iii) Get familiar with a few of the tabs from Page Layout – Indent, Spacing, Margins.

Also, FYI, 100% zoom gives you the size of the actual document.

When you send for edits make sure to Track Changes and make Comments (Review tab).

2. Spacing:

(i) Make sure there is enough space above and below each sub-section and also each

section. PS: Avoid one word overflowing to the next line. Wastes space. Like here.

(ii) Ensure the heading stands out and is not too cluttered with too much text around it.

(iii) Headings look good in Small Caps and Expanded character spacing. LIKE THIS.

(iv) Most people avoid ‘Justify’ing the text and let it remain ‘Left Align’ed as in the

former case, the spaces between words varies, causing a disturbed reading flow.

3. Font Size:

(i) Typically, the text is one/two font sizes lesser than the headings.

(ii) If you are writing about your work in an organization say, your Techfest Manager

responsibilities and you also need to explain about the organization, you can do it as

shown in the example at the end.

(iii) Details of guides/intern institutes/organisation etc. can be written in a smaller font

size and italicized.

4. Font Choice:

Serif fonts, like Times New Roman and Cambria are generally more popular, especially for

headings. You may choose to keep the main text in sans-serif ones like Arial and Verdana.

5. Date Formats:

Be uniform throughout with the format of the date you choose. Be it: March 2011, Mar 2011,

March ’11. (Make sure the apostrophe is a closing one).

Wherever relevant, mention the year.

6. Grammatical Sense:

(i) You can freely omit articles, prepositions, etc. as long as the content makes sense.

Use semicolons to separate phrases and get rid of conjunctions.

(ii) Full stops are not to be put at the end of a bullet point.

Rule of thumb: Keep maximum 3 bullets under a heading.

7. Bold, Italic and Underline:

Use with caution. Don’t use them excessively. Underlining is not very popular.

8. Miscellaneous :

(i) — vs – vs - (em dash and en dash and hypen)

(ii) Give statistics. Give numbers. Give data. Always impressive.

(iii) Always stress on your work. Give more info about what you did, what your

contribution was rather than what the team achieved as a whole. People can always

get information about the organisation’s/team’s accomplishment. This résumé is

about you.

As an example, consider the following: