Wrote a 2,500+ word report relating to resume design, including information on the resume's history, eyetracking studies on recruiters, new visual elements and advice on how to start writing one. Extra credit was given for formatting this paper in Adobe InDesign CC as a 4 page spread, similar to that used for magazine publishing.

1. Sammie Walker,
Carnegie Mellon University
May 2015
It is widely regarded that the earliest creat-
ed resume belonged to Leonardo da Vinci
in 1482, in order to convince Ludovico il
Moro, the Duke of Milan, that he was the
most qualified architect for building castle
defenses:
“I shall endeavor, without prejudice to any
one else, to explain myself to your Excellen-
cy, showing your Lordship my secret, and
then offering them to your best pleasure
and approbation to work with effect at
opportune moments…”
Not so much a resume as a CV (Curric-
ulum Vitae, which means “the course of
my life”), da Vinci barely mentions his re-
nowned painting skill, stating “also I can
do in painting whatever may be done, as
well as any other, be he who he may.” Da
Vinci’s intent is not to be self-deprecating
but to focus on the experiences and skills
relevant to making a castle both more de-
fensive and offensive. As seen above, the
document is handwritten in a formal and
fancy ‘typeface,’ and the ease of reading in-
creased by the numbers on the left-hand
margin indicating the paragraph number-
ing.
Unfortunately and surprisingly, the topic
of the resume really has not been very well
documented. Apparently, the resume was
considered an optional document until
the 1950s when it became a standard for
job applications. With the advent of word
processors in the 1980s, they became even
more commonplace and now more easily
shared through the World Wide Web. To-
day, there are numerous sites where you
can make an online resume, such as Linke-
dIn, CollegeFeed, Indeed.com, etc.
PURPOSE AND BASIC
DESIGN
What is the purpose of this document and
what goes into it? Some think that the pur-
pose of the resume is to get you a job. If
thinking long-term, this is correct. How-
ever, it’s not your immediate doorway in.
A resume is a first impression, and, if any-
thing, your doorway into getting an inter-
view. A resume is not an exhaustive list of
all that you’ve ever accomplished in your
life, it is a collection of detailed, imperson-
ally phrased experiences that should relate
to the new experience you are pursuing.
For example, winning valedictorian of
your middle school may never pose rele-
vant for a job application. But placing in
a singing competition can highlight your
performance skills for a theatre audition
or even allow you to explain how you suc-
ceed under pressure. Just because it was
years ago doesn’t mean it doesn’t count
anymore. You just need to prove that you
still have those skills that you used or de-
veloped back then.
A resume is typically divided into vari-
ous sections, all detailing experiences in
reverse chronological order (the most re-
cent experience in the section, first until
the oldest, then repeating this process in
each subsequent section). Basic sections
usually include but are not limited to Ed-
ucation, Work Experience, Leadership,
Activities, and Skills. However, the “rules”
of resume writing are becoming more lax,
allowing job searchers to be more creative
with their sections which can include Lan-
guages, Certifications, Volunteer Experi-
ence and even Hobbies & Interests. One
standard which will most likely never be-
come lax is the one-page “rule.” Most re-
cruiters don’t even expect a second page,
which means it could be easily forgotten if
printed on the back of the page, or easily
lost if attached to the other page. Even in
a web based format, more than one page
obviously demonstrates the applicant’s in-
ability to be concise.
Some choices to consider within your re-
sume are typeface, column number, white
space balance and more. For typefaces, the
biggest choice is usually between serif and
sans-serif fonts. Serif fonts give off a more
professional and traditional effect while
sans serif fonts express modernity and a
clean cut look. The impression these type-
faces give off are important to consider if
you’re applying to different industries. For
example, a serif font will seem more in line
with jobs in academia or in business while
sans-serif connects well with the technolo-
gy and start-up look. It’s also important to
consider the medium to which the resume
will be viewed. If printed, a serif font will
increase readability due to the ‘end cuts’
that distinguish each letter from each oth-
er. If on a screen, the safer bet is a sans-ser-
if font so the image looks clearer as screens
resolutions do not yet make the added de-
tails on serifs fonts look totally clear.
Sammie Walker 1
Figure 1: An image of the first recorded
CV by Leonardo da Vinci.

2. In regards to columns, the two most com-
mon types of resumes are one-column and
two-column resumes. One column means
the information is shared evenly across
the width of the page. The two-column
divides the page into two, making the sec-
tions smaller but with a more clear hier-
archy. These usually consist of small con-
tact, skills and activities sections while still
allowing you to write out more info for
experience, leadership and other more de-
tailed work. To see whether you should do
a one or two column resume, you can try
the ‘squint test.’ First, hold your resume an
arm’s length away and squint at it. You can
see text heavy areas turn dark grey while
the textless or text light areas turn a lighter
shade. There should be a balance of grey so
that the page is readable but still looks like
it has content on it.
One last addition to the traditional re-
sume is not traditional at all but has been
completely adopted: adding in social me-
dia links. You have a LinkedIn? Put in the
handle! You have a Twitter, YouTube, Ins-
tagram, Pinterest, Facebook or any other
site you want to highlight, go for it! These
links allow your interests and skills to ex-
tend past the page.
However this process of self-marketing is
not without its critics. Dr. Lester Faigley,
a professor of rhetoric and writing at the
University of Teas at Austin, criticizes the
modern resume and “how it forces candi-
dates in the process of this self-construc-
tion to regard themselves as products to
be sold, as commodities that they must
market to the highest bidder.” For him, the
severe limitations of space, the imperson-
al phrasing (almost always in third per-
son), and the strict pressure to fit oneself
into categories like “work experience” and
“skills,” limit the candidate’s ability to ex-
press themselves as a human individual.
Faigley considers the resume a peculiarly
written artifact “within the discourse of
the institution” (the job market) created
“outside of institutions” (within someone’s
home). This dissonance between where
the document was written, one’s home
where they can self-express as they please,
and where it is sent “forces employment
candidates to locate themselves within the
institution” which is inherently out of con-
text. Does this mean that the job search is
a necessary evil? It’s your choice to decide.
EYETRACKING
There are many estimates for how long a
recruiter or employer reads a resume, due
to their practiced experience and due to
context as well. Would you be more likely
to spend 6 seconds or 30 seconds on a re-
sume if it were a job fair versus looking at
them on your computer screen?
One of the most telling indicators of what
recruiters truly look at and how they spend
time reading is eye tracking software. Eye
tracking is “a technologically advanced
assessment of eye movement that records
and analyzes where and how long a per-
son focuses when digesting information
or completing activities,” which is repre-
sented by a “heat map.” The heat map goes
from clear to blue to yellow to orange to
red; the redder the spot, the longer the fo-
cus. A 2012 study by William Evans found
that recruiters tend to have a visual routine
when going over resumes, indicating their
preference for having an organized and
easy to follow layout. (This study was con-
ducted by an online resume building web-
site so its content has a conflict of interest.)
Additionally, this study was the impetus
for the “six second review” idea as “de-
spite recruiters’ different self-reports – the
study found that recruiters spend only 6
seconds reviewing an individual resume.”
Interestingly enough, the average self-re-
ported time was 4-5 minutes, a strong dis-
parity that has not yet since been disputed
nor researched.
While looking through a document,
whether online or printed, its different as-
pects take up different amounts of work-
ing memory capacity. Ease of readability
and sufficient spacing do not add much to
your cognitive load or total mental activity.
However, when these documents, which
are expected to be clear cut and well-de-
signed, are poorly organized and hard to
read, this increases the cognitive load on
the reviewer, making them feel like they
don’t want to read it or just remembering
the negative experience associated with
it. In short, if you want others to read it
and have a postitive take away, it should be
easy to read.
Additionally, there are different prefer-
ences and eye tracked behaviors measured
when reviewing a printed resume versus
an online resume. Online resumes are cre-
ated in a context of distraction. They are
hosted on the web, where thousands of
other sites and applications are begging
for our attention. Within online resume
profiles, the reviewers in this study were
found to be easily distracted by pictures
(relevant or not), advertisements and the
like. For example, the heat maps of the
LinkedIn profiles indicated that the 30 re-
cruiters spent an average of 19% of their
total time focusing on the profile picture.
(Important to note is that the screenshot
of a LinkedIn profile before 2012, which
has since changed format many times
since, which may make this data inaccu-
rate for today). When the important infor-
mation is in the written content, these dis-
tractions take the already limited amount
of time that recruiters were willing to give
each candidate. Additionally, online re-
sumes usually recommend the applicants
to include more personal information, but
“irrelevant data such as candidates’ age,
gender or race [may bias] reviewers’ judg-
ments.”
2 Resume Design
Figure 2: Examples of Serif and Sans-Serif typefaces.

3. One more interesting result was “that re-
cruiters spent almost 80% of their resume
review time on the following data points:
Name, Previous position start and end
dates, Current title/company,
Current position start and end
dates, Previous title/company
and education.” Beyond that,
their search seemed to be a task
of confirmation bias, looking for
keywords and target phrases that
may have appeared in the job
description. Since the “resume’s
detail and explanatory copy be-
came filler and had little to no
impact on the initial decision
making,” we can infer that the
design has significant to moder-
ately significant impact on this
first impression. Though it can
be objectively researched, the act
of reviewing seems to be less of
a science and more of a search
for art.
DESIGNED
RESUMES
It’s best to stick out from the crowd—or is
it? The image to the bottom right shows an
example of a ‘designed’ resume (a redun-
dancy since all resumes are works of de-
sign!). As noted in the eye tracking study,
illustrations take attention but it may not
be as positive as previously thought.
Another issue with designed resumes is
that the resume is not for its writer. You
may be unintentionally making the read-
er work harder to read your material if it
is not how they are not as they expect it to
be. Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab)
explains that “readers have expectations
about how a resume should look”—fea-
tures including your name on the top of
the document, headers indicating the dif-
ferent sections of text, and more.
At this moment, there is a lot of discourse
concerning how much is too much when
it comes to design. Prezumes, resumes
hosted on a Prezi slideshow, are used
to visually take the reader on a journey
through your work experience and ac-
complishments. Many new visual ele-
ments are being incorporated into these
designed and even mostly traditional
resumes.
Just searching for “cool resumes” pulls up
thousands of examples of modern and col-
orful looking marketing tools. One pop-
ular and common element of these new
resumes are filling out a visual proficiency
bar. However, they do not clearly portray
the level of skill the person says they have
in the given programming language, spo-
ken language, soft skill, etc. What does 3/5
dots mean in terms of proficiency? Does
3/5 pencils convince me that you know
technical writing well enough for me to
hire you? Like the proficiency
bars, pie charts are often includ-
ed to illustrate how the candidate
views their skills divided within
themselves. Though very visual-
ly interesting, these graphs can
easily be hard to read or may
unintentionally make the candi-
date look weaker if a desired skill
is ranked very low. Since these
charts need to be analyzed, they
are inherently more work to read,
therefore increasing the cognitive
load placed on the reader and po-
tentially making the graph one of
the only read pieces.
As seen before, these resumes are
also more likely to include pic-
tures or illustrations, whether it
be a portrait of the candidate or
little clip art images that bring
more life into the document. It
is usually frowned upon to in-
clude a photo of yourself on the resume
since it could potentially bias the recruiter
based on your gender, age, race and other
physical factors. However, for other types
Sammie Walker 3
Figure 3: The pattern of eye movements along a 2012 LinkedIn Profile.
Figure 4: A traditional resume alongside a designed resume.

4. of resumes such as ones from other coun-
tries or one for a casting call or a theatre
major, these are more likely to aid in the
job search. As technology has integrat-
ed into our daily lives, it has also found a
home in the professional sphere and may
influence your decision to add a new form
of image on the document: the QR Code.
The recruiter can take a picture of the code
on your resume and use an app to direct
them to the online media you encoded on
the black and white photo. This allows the
candidate to direct the recruiter to your
personal website, online resume, profes-
sional portfolio or other desired link. This
addition could make you as the candidate
look tech-savvy, an added bonus in the
battle of trying to stand out of the crowd.
Some possible disadvantages include the
code taking up valuable content space or
recruiters not knowing how or wanting to
use the code but these challenges should
be weighed by the resume writer as to
what they find most important.
Color is a big deal in a resume. Even some
more traditional resumes are beginning
to have at least one tone for the headers.
Many of these Prezumes and other Pinter-
est infographics use color to attract atten-
tion to the document as a whole, but for-
get to let the page breathe and be readable.
Bright colors could either bring or deflect
a reader to the page. Light accent colors
are usually a safe bet.
A CLEAN SLATE
How should you even start writing a re-
sume? First, don’t write a resume. Write
out a comprehensive list of jobs, activities,
honors and whatever accomplishments
you completed over the past couple of
years. Include high school too! Make sure
while you’re listing to leave space so you
can explain what you’ve done in those ex-
periences. If you worked as a waiter/wait-
ress, don’t include small tasks such as wip-
ing down tables or taking orders. The rule
of thumb is to generalize the tasks while
specifying the effect, which could either be
qualitative or quantitative. For the waiter/
waitress here are two examples, one inef-
fective and one effective:
NO: Cleaned and Waited tables, took many
orders and smiled at customers when they
walked in to Dave’s Burgers.
YES: Facilitated effective customer service
by attending to 40 customers per day, serv-
ing them quickly and accurately while pro-
moting a friendly environment.
Use action verbs that help summarize what
you’ve done and make sure to vary them!
Using ‘worked’ over and over doesn’t truly
represent what positive effect you had on
the organization and their operations.
After making your comprehensive list
with action phrases, connect them with
the job you’re applying for. What skills do
they want to know you have? Tailor your
one page to their needs! Don’t scrap the
comprehensive list but make it a docu-
ment that you can take pieces off of so you
can make different tailored resumes, such
as a general resume, a technical resume, a
Spanish resume, etc. Now go out there and
wow the crowd! Just make sure to read out
your work to check for spelling and gram-
mar!
Works Cited
Brizee, Allen. “Résumé Design.” Purdue
OWL: Résumé Design. Purdue University,
11 Mar. 2013. Web. 04 May 2015.
Cenedella, Marc. “Leonardo Da Vinci’s
Resume.” The Ladders, 13 Apr. 2015. Web.
01 May 2015.
Evans, Will. “Eye Tracking Online Meta-
cognition: Cognitive Complexity and Re-
cruiter Decision Making.” TheLadders.
2012. Web. 03 May 2015.
“Introduction to and Expectations for Ré-
sumés.” Purdue OWL: Résumés 1: Intro-
duction to Résumés. Purdue University,
n.d. Web. 04 May 2015.
Jackson, LC. “The 500+ Year History of the
CV – The Life and Death of the Curricu-
lum Vitae?” TheEmployable, 13 Dec. 2011.
Web. 01 May 2015.
Popken, Randall. “Introduction.” The Ped-
agogical Dissemination of a Genre: The
Resume in American Business Discourse
Textbooks, 1914-1939. 1st ed. Vol. 19.
N.p.: JAC, 1999. 91-94. JSTOR. Web. 02
May 2015.
“QR Codes Power Up Resumes.” PRSA
Jobcenter and IAEWS. The Public Rela-
tions Society of America, n.d. Web. 04
May 2015.
4 Resume Design
Sammie Walker
Carnegie Mellon University
70-160
Graphic Media Management
Figure 5: A cool resume.