The Best and Worst Fonts for Resumes (and Font Sizes)

Have you ever found yourself wanting your resume to be absolutely perfect to increase your chances at earning an interview with your dream employer?

No doubt you spent hours making sure the substantive content of your resume aligned with the job itself, such as including keywords from the job description, blending soft and hard skills, and making sure your work experience tells the proper career story.

But what about the appearance of your resume? Have you considered that there are certain fonts and sizes you should (and should not) utilize to further increase your success rate? If not, you may want to review the following best and worst fonts and sizes for your resume.

The Top Three Resume Fonts

1. Calibri

There was a time when Times New Roman was Microsoft Word’s default font. But if you boot up the application now, you will see that Calibri owns that honor.  Calibri is a modern, refined, and professional font that reads well. It is also a sans-serif font, which renders out more clearly on a screen, thereby increasing legibility.

2. Cambria

Cambria is another popular and professional-looking font. Though it is a serif font, it was specifically designed to perform well on-screen and look good when printed out.

3. Garamond

For many, Times New Roman is the default – which is exactly why you should avoid it.  Garamond is a great alternative.  Not only does it provide a classic, polished look, but it also helps fit more text on a page without compromising readability.

The Three Worst Resume Fonts

1. Impact

Right away you should be able to tell why you should avoid this font at all costs. It is bold, which makes for a better personality trait than font. Keep this one off your resume.

2. Lucida Console

As you can tell, this font has a fixed width, which makes it appear boxy and computer-like. Even if your resume will be read on a screen, there are much better alternatives to this one.

3. Times New Roman

In all fairness, there are many fonts worse than Times New Roman. You could scroll through Word’s options and find a host of terrible fonts ill-suited for resumes. But the point here is to emphasize commonly used fonts that you should not be using.  And as previously stated, Times New Roman is overly used and not unique, which will work against your efforts to stand out.

Let’s Talk Font Sizes

Once you have picked the right font, your next thought should be how big or small to make the font size.

The simple and straightforward answer is this: the best resume font sizes are 11 to 12 for normal text and 14-16 for section titles and headers.

You may be tempted to use smaller font sizes so you can fit all of your content onto a single page. Do not do that. Instead, experiment with font types or limiting content before resorting to smaller font sizes.

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