MARKETING
The Best Fonts for Your Resume in 2022, According to HubSpot Recruiters
Studies have shown recruiters typically scan a resume for only about six seconds before making a decision on whether an applicant is fit for a role.
With only six seconds to demonstrate your qualifications for a position, every detail counts – including the font you use. The question is, what are the best resume fonts to pass the six-second scan?
We asked HubSpot recruiters to reveal the seven best fonts for your resume as well as what they consider in terms of design in general, so your resume can stand out in the pile.
Featured Resource: 12 Free Resume Templates
Best Resume Fonts
- Times New Roman
- Arial
- Calibri
- Helvetica
- Cambria
- Georgia
- Garamond
- Avenir Next
- Muna
With only six seconds to demonstrate your qualifications for a position, every detail counts. To evoke a sense of style, professionalism, and uniqueness, it’s critical you put effort and consideration into your font choice.
When speaking with recruiters, it quickly became clear that classic fonts are still the best options.
“I’m a big fan of the ‘classics’ for resumes – Times New Roman, Arial, Calibri, Helvetica, and Cambria. I’m a little old school, but I think they are the cleanest and exude professionalism,” said Johanna Fleming, a former senior recruiter at HubSpot.
Riley Kundtz, former senior MBA campus recruiter at HubSpot, agreed.
“I find the classic formatting and Times font to be helpful when reading a dense resume from an experienced MBA candidate.”
Times New Roman has become a bit controversial lately. It was the go-to font for many years, but lately, some are opting against it.
“For me, it’s all about legibility and cleanliness – I prefer sans-serif fonts like Helvetica over serif fonts like Times New Roman,” said technical recruiter at HubSpot, Glory Montes. “Overall, I would just stay away from a font like Times New Roman, it’s overused and reminds me of long nights writing course papers in college.”
One font that’s similar to Times is Georgia, it’s a bit wider making it easier to read. In fact, it’s the font used by The New York Times.
Paulina Valdez Franco, executive recruiter at HubSpot, agrees with this take.
“My two favorite fonts are Helvetica, if you’re looking for a clean and classic look, and Georgia, if you’re going after a more modern and fun look,” she said. “The latter is also designed to read well on screens.”
Helvetica is widely used in the advertising industry and works equally well for text-heavy pages and documents.
A lesser-known font that’s a great option for your resume is Garamond, recommended by our current team lead of engineering recruiting at HubSpot, Rich Lapham.
“Recruiters have an idea of the skills they are looking for on a resume, so if you try a new style or format, it can be tougher for recruiters to find the information they are looking for,” he said. “Keep it clean and simple.”
Franco added that Arial and Calibri are great choices if you want to play it safe.
Bridget LeMon, global emerging talent and university recruiting manager at HubSpot, echoes this.
“It’s totally acceptable – and becoming more common – for candidates to stray away from the resume norms of Times New Roman and Calibri,” she said. “Avenir Next and Muna are two great options if you are looking to break the status quo.”
Ultimately, you’ll want to consider the position for which you’re applying when you’re choosing a font. To Montes’ point, certain more creative roles might benefit from a more unique font than Times New Roman.
Does your resume font even matter?
Most recruiters I spoke with were hesitant to even offer a font at all. Instead, they focus on the content.
“I typically don’t pay too much attention to font,” said Heta Patel former HubSpot recruiter. “I’m more concerned about whether the resume is formatted in a clean way – submitting a PDF is helpful with this, so your formatting doesn’t shift.”
Sales Recruiting Manager Kelsey Freedman agreed.
“Honestly, I don’t care much about the font of a resume, as long as it’s clear and in PDF format. I typically only review a resume for 20 to 30 seconds, so a traditional font is good. I would advise avoiding script font or bubble font, or something distracting like that.”
Ultimately, and as expected, your content still matters most. However, a clean, clear font will help avoid any irritability you might cause a recruiter with a distracting, messy design.
“What I get most excited about is the content. Depending on the role, I look to see that candidates are sharing direct and compelling snapshots of their work,” said Ashley Hodder, a global recruiting manager at HubSpot. “I look for indicators that show data orientation, autonomy, and thoughtfulness about business impact.”
Worst Resume Fonts
While some recruiters may not have suggestions for the best fonts to use, many can agree on some of the worst ones.
“Anything that is cursive, or too bubbly, is too hard to read. For instance, I’d stay clear of Comic Sans,” says Holly Peterson, team lead for UX recruiting HubSpot.
Another font type to avoid is Script.
With text-heavy documents, Script and any of its derivatives make things hard to read because they’re meant to look like they’re written by hand.
They’re generally used in hand lettering and calligraphy for artistic projects and shouldn’t be present anywhere near your resume.
Ideal Resume Font Size
When asked about which font size is best, Fleming said 12 is ideal. Most recruiters would agree.
Your text should be large enough to read comfortably without straining but small enough that there’s space to include all the key elements, such as an objective, contact information, skills, and experience.
Where you can go larger are for headings for your name and section titles.
If the font you chose is particularly wide, you can scale down to 10.5 – never going below it.
The key takeaway is that make your resume as clear and easy-to-read as possible, which means keeping the font size around 12, sticking to classic fonts with modern twists, and forsaking your favorite script font.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
MARKETING
Trends in Content Localization – Moz
Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.
Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.
Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.
MARKETING
How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy
MARKETING
More promotions and more layoffs
For martech professionals salaries are good and promotions are coming faster, unfortunately, layoffs are coming faster, too. That’s according to the just-released 2024 Martech Salary and Career Survey. Another very unfortunate finding: The median salary of women below the C-suite level is 35% less than what men earn.
The last year saw many different economic trends, some at odds with each other. Although unemployment remained very low overall and the economy grew, some businesses — especially those in technology and media — cut both jobs and spending. Reasons cited for the cuts include during the early years of the pandemic, higher interest rates and corporate greed.
Dig deeper: How to overcome marketing budget cuts and hiring freezes
Be that as it may, for the employed it remains a good time to be a martech professional. Salaries remain lucrative compared to many other professions, with an overall median salary of $128,643.
Here are the median salaries by role:
- Senior management $199,653
- Director $157,776
- Manager $99,510
- Staff $89,126
Senior managers make more than twice what staff make. Directors and up had a $163,395 median salary compared to manager/staff roles, where the median was $94,818.
One-third of those surveyed said they were promoted in the last 12 months, a finding that was nearly equal among director+ (32%) and managers and staff (30%).
Extend the time frame to two years, and nearly three-quarters of director+ respondents say they received a promotion, while the same can be said for two-thirds of manager and staff respondents.
Dig deeper: Skills-based hiring for modern marketing teams
Employee turnover
In 2023, we asked survey respondents if they noticed an increase in employee churn and whether they would classify that churn as a “moderate” or “significant” increase. For 2024, given the attention on cost reductions and layoffs, we asked if the churn they witnessed was “voluntary” (e.g., people leaving for another role) or “involuntary” (e.g., a layoff or dismissal). More than half of the marketing technology professionals said churn increased in the last year. Nearly one-third classified most of the churn as “involuntary.”
Men and Women
This year, instead of using average salary figures, we used the median figures to lessen the impact of outliers in the salary data. As a result, the gap between salaries for men and women is even more glaring than it was previously.
In last year’s report, men earned an average of 24% more than women. This year the median salary of men is 35% more than the median salary of women. That is until you get to the upper echelons. Women at director and up earned 5% more than men.
Methodology
The 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey is a joint project of MarTech.org and chiefmartec.com. We surveyed 305 marketers between December 2023 and February 2024; 297 of those provided salary information. Nearly 63% (191) of respondents live in North America; 16% (50) live in Western Europe. The conclusions in this report are limited to responses from those individuals only. Other regions were excluded due to the limited number of respondents.
Download your copy of the 2024 MarTech Salary and Career Survey here. No registration is required.
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