A professional CV uses a clean, single-column layout with clearly labeled sections arranged in reverse chronological order. The overall look should be simple: black text on a white page, consistent formatting, and enough white space that a hiring manager can scan it in under 30 seconds. What goes on the page and how you arrange it depends on your career level and where in the world you’re applying.
Page Length by Career Level
Entry-level professionals and recent graduates should keep their CV to one page. Once you’re past entry level, two pages is the standard ceiling for most industries. Academic CVs are the exception: three to five pages is normal because they need to catalog publications, presentations, teaching history, and research in full. If your CV feels too short, you likely need more experience rather than more padding. If it’s running long, tighten your bullet points before cutting whole sections.
Font, Margins, and Spacing
Stick with a standard, easy-to-read font like Times New Roman, Garamond, or Helvetica. Body text should be 10 to 12 points. Your name at the top can be slightly larger, around 12 to 14 points, but don’t go bigger than that. Keep margins at 0.5 inches or wider on all sides. Anything narrower starts to feel cramped and becomes harder to read on screen or in print.
Use one font throughout the document. Mixing typefaces or sizes beyond the name and body text distinction looks disorganized and can also cause problems with automated screening software. Bold and italics are fine for section headers and job titles, but use them consistently. If one job title is bold, every job title should be bold.
Contact Information at the Top
Your name goes at the very top, followed by your phone number, professional email address, city and state (a full street address is no longer expected), and a LinkedIn profile URL if yours is up to date. If your CV runs to multiple pages, add your name and page number as a header or footer on every page after the first so nothing gets lost if pages are separated.
Section Order and What to Include
The standard sequence for most professionals is:
- Education: List degrees in reverse chronological order, with the most advanced degree first. Include the degree name, major, institution, city, state, and graduation date. For graduate degrees, add your dissertation or thesis title and advisor’s name.
- Experience: Rather than lumping everything under one heading, split experience into categories that reflect your background. The most common are Research Experience and Teaching Experience, but you might also have sections for Industry Experience, Clinical Experience, or Fieldwork. Each entry should include the institution, department, your title, dates, and a brief description of what you did.
- Publications: Use a consistent citation format (APA or MLA are standard). Note the status of each item: published, in press, submitted, or invited. If you have enough entries, break this into subsections like journal articles, book chapters, and reviews.
- Presentations: List all presenters, the presentation title, conference name, location, and date.
- Service: Include committee work, task forces, department groups, and field-related volunteer roles. Note any leadership positions like chair or co-chair.
- Skills: This section is optional but useful for listing laboratory techniques, programming languages, software proficiency, or technical certifications that don’t fit elsewhere.
If you’re earlier in your career, education typically comes first. Once your professional experience outweighs your academic credentials, move experience above education. The guiding principle is to lead with your strongest material.
Formatting for Applicant Tracking Systems
Most large employers use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to screen CVs before a human ever reads them. These systems parse your document for keywords, job titles, and qualifications. A design that looks beautiful to a person can be completely unreadable to an ATS if you use the wrong formatting.
The safest approach is a single-column layout with no tables, text boxes, or multi-column designs. Avoid headers and footers for critical information like your contact details, since some systems skip those areas entirely. Standard bullet points are fine, but decorative symbols, icons, lines, borders, and shading can confuse the parser. Special characters and accented letters are also risky. Even the word “résumé” with accent marks can show up garbled in an ATS.
Save your file as a .doc (Word 97-2003 format) unless the job posting specifically requests a PDF. Not every ATS handles .docx, PDF, or RTF reliably. Keep punctuation out of your name field as well: parentheses, slashes, and hyphens in your name line can interfere with how the system indexes you. If you want a more visually polished version for networking events or in-person interviews, keep a second formatted copy, but always submit the clean version online.
What Changes for International Applications
If you’re applying for jobs outside the United States, the expectations for what a CV looks like shift significantly. In Germany, France, and much of Asia, including a passport-style photo on your CV is customary and sometimes expected. Many international employers also want to see your nationality, visa status, and language abilities listed explicitly. Some countries require information that would be unusual or even legally sensitive in the U.S., such as ethnicity or a national ID number.
Before applying internationally, research the specific norms of the country where the job is located. A CV that follows U.S. conventions may look incomplete to a hiring manager in Berlin, while a CV with a photo and personal details could raise concerns with a recruiter in Chicago. When in doubt, look at sample CVs published by universities or career offices in that country for a reliable template.
Putting It All Together
The best CVs share a few traits regardless of field. They use white space deliberately so each section is easy to find. They lead with the most relevant qualifications for the role. Every line serves a purpose, whether that’s a degree, a publication, a skill, or a specific accomplishment in a previous position. And they’re consistent: if your first job entry uses bold for the title, a comma before the date, and bullet points for duties, every entry that follows should match that pattern exactly. Consistency signals attention to detail, and in a document that represents your professional life, that impression matters as much as the content itself.