Formatting your CV is a nightmare, especially if it’s your first time, but it is something very important to do. If you’ve already got a CV, it probably needs an update, which can also be difficult to do neatly, especially if you didn’t quite get the formatting right last time. With that in mind, today we’ll highlight a few tips for formatting your CV that you can use to make sure that your CV not only looks good, but can be modified without too much hassle in the future.

When formatting your CV, one common mistake that people make is to use different fonts and lots of bold or italics to separate out each section. This can lead to a CV where there’s just a bit too much going on. It’s better to stick to a single font (something classic though, nothing that will take anyone extra time to read it), and to use bold and italics sparingly, for example only for your headings. This will make the end product easier to read and will make it more obvious where each sections begins and ends, allowing the reader to quickly jump around and gather the information they want.

It can be easy to get caught up in trying to format your own spacing for bullet points, headings, etc. This is a dangerous trap to fall into, as you’ll likely end up with slightly wonky line starts and you will have a really hard time modifying the CV in the future. So avoid just using the space bar to get something where you want it. Instead, use bullet points and other options that are already auto formatted. This format may not be your first choice, but it will likely look better in the end than trying to sort it out on your own. Likewise, if you’re going to use separate columns to list your skills, use a table. Using a table keeps things neat and allows you to use the auto formatting for bullet points. Just remember to remove the table boundaries and check this in print preview before you send it off anywhere.

We’ve mentioned before that it’s not a good idea to have your CV covering only part of page. When formatting your CV, it’s much more professional to make sure that it fills one or two full pages. So what can you do if you’ve got something in between? A good trick to use for formatting your CV in this situation is to modify the margins of the page. This gives you a bit more space to talk about your accomplishments. Use this in moderation though. It’s not going to look very good if the text stretches all the way to the margins on every side. And if you are going to modify the margins, try to keep them in the same ratio so that the text isn’t all squished on one side of the page either.

While formatting your CV is a bit of a pain, putting in the effort to get it right now will save you loads of time in the future when you’ve got even more to add. Play around with the formatting tools a bit until you find something that works, and try to avoid the space bar for anything other than spacing between each word!