Have you ever visited a website or picked up a flyer and the font choice, layout and combination of colours make your eyes hurt?

You think to yourself ‘I don’t care what they’re selling, this design is too terrible for me to spend the time reviewing what they have to say.’

I think the reality is, we can all relate to this. We are bombarded with advertising messages and visual sales devices all day long.

Some designs catch our attention for the right reasons, some for the wrong reasons and other designs barely register with us.

And yet, when it comes to selling ourselves (our skills and experience) on our CV, most of us give little thought to the overall design and visual appeal of the document.

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Choose the right font for your CV

To put this simply, if you want your CV to look good, and you want it to represent you as a high calibre professional who produces high quality work, you need to pick the right fonts.

I am a professional CV writer, and over the years I've come to understand that some fonts work a lot better than others on CVs.

Below, I'm going to outline exactly which fonts I use, and why I think you should use them on your CV too.

If you haven't found a CV template yet, you can download one here, all of my CV templates use my recommended fonts and font sizes.

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The best fonts for your CV are:

• Calibri: No-nonsense, modern, subtle and easy to read. It’s narrower than most other options which is great for saving space and maximising content.

• Helvetica: Clean, simple, modern and looks great if you want to create a minimalist CV.

• Garamond: A traditional serif font. it’s more attractive than Times New Roman and can look classic and elegant when used correctly.

• Century Gothic: A modern font that has large round lettering. Great for headings but avoid using this font for the main body of the document.

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What size font should you use on your CV?

When writing your CV it's important to consider the size of your text.

If the font size on your CV is too large, your text will take up too much space and it'll look unprofessional.

If the font on your CV is too small, your CV will be difficult to read and you'll probably include too much detail without realising it.

10, 10.5 or 11 are ideal font sizes for the main body of your CV.

Why does this really matter?

You might be thinking that recruiters are only interested in the content of your CV and that the design has no impact.

However, whilst it is the content which will ultimately win you the interview, good design can help the recruiter to take notice and spend more time evaluating your content. Good design can also subliminally (and to some extent consciously) influence the recruiter and communicate to them what type of candidate you are.

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Conclusion

When it comes to your CV, it's often the small details that add up to the biggest difference. Pay close attention to the details so that you present the very best CV that you possibly can.