The resume: design

There are two separate schools of thought on this (as with anything else, since job searching and recruitment is such a highly subjective field):

• those who suggest that you keep your resume as close to a plain .txt document, and

• those who think you should add some design to it.

The former tend to believe this because of AI resume crawlers that may not be able to parse resumes with more complex designs.

However, this isn't necessarily true: I'd say that some designers overlook the fact that their resume is still technically a design artifact, and is therefore a testament to your design skill.

If you're applying to a really old-school company or an industry that's only recently adopted the idea of design as a ROI lever (you can usually tell by the website), then you're more likely to get away with just exporting a pdf from Word. But the number of designers who want to get into these kinds of companies are far fewer and have less obstacles to overcome in their job applications.

If you're applying for a job at a company with an established design culture and organisation, you should absolutely have a well-designed resume.

It's anecdotal, but it makes sense: they're expecting good designers to submit good-looking resumes, so they must have configured systems to be better than the basic AI filter.

The number of designers who want to get jobs at companies that have established design departments is far greater, which means that you are actively competing with more people on every single level.

As such, you need to make sure that your resume passes fundamental visual design checks. Go ahead and make it in Figma.

Here's a very arbitrary, incredibly subjective list that I've compiled:

• Most text should be sans serif.

• Don't have more than two colours (one of them must be black).

• Limit text stylings and formats.

• Have at least two columns.

• Use auto-layout.

Please remember that your resume's design should be in service of your resume's words: this design exists for an informational purpose.

1. The vast majority of text should be sans serif

It needs to be readable, and serif text is more difficult to skim especially when it's at smaller sizes.

Serif text in general should be used sparingly, and only as accent text if needed (this is definitely a trend, and is probably already oversaturated).

While you're at it, please pick a good sans serif — avoid Calibri and any defaults in Microsoft Word.

2. Don't have more than two colours (one of them must be black)

Again, it needs to be readable.

This is highly subjective and dependent on your execution, but in general I've found most people who choose more than two or three colours to have resumes that are really difficult to read, or are visually discordant. This is not the place to express your passion for postmodern contemporary graphic design.

If you do choose a distinct colour (as opposed to a shade of grey), make sure it's not garish. I'm definitely biased but so are you — get another designer to look at it and ask if it's tastefully done.

I've seen way too much neon yellow, lurid navy, and solid red. Please don't highlight words with those colours; you are actively sabotaging the readability of your sentences.

3. Limit text stylings and formats

Pretend that you are in design system jail, and you can only use up to three different text styles (your name not included), e.g.:

• Bolded header text, for your company & job title

• Italicised smaller text, for the dates

• Regular body text

Avoid adding extra stuff as much as possible.

The recruiter's cognitive load matters: if they have to parse italics, highlighted text, bolded text, underlined text, text in different fonts, text in different sizes, they won't really care about what you have to say since you've already shown them that you're not great at saying it.

This includes making sure your links are bolded instead of underlined, and so on. Make sure that they fit in well with the rest of the stylings that exist.

4. Have at least two columns

Make use of columns to format your information more effectively.

Please don't just make long paragraphs that take up the entire width: these look like minimal effort has been taken with the design (you could've just made it in MS Word).

I've seen some great looking resumes that have three columns, but I'd probably draw the line there.

5. Use auto-layout.

Auto-layout is such an important feature when designing in Figma.

It not only ensures consistency in your design, but also makes it far easier to hand off to engineers: in the world of front-end development, an auto-layouted frame is basically the same thing as a div.

It stands to reason that if you're getting your resume parsed by a computer, there will be some recognition of hierarchy that somewhat mirrors this.

You should be using auto-layout to structure your resume into sections.

How can you tell if a company has an established design culture?

For one, they're usually large-scale companies. This means that there's usually more investment into design.

However, this doesn't necessarily mean that design has a seat at the table, and for most companies, it's an ongoing uphill battle.

FAANG companies (for the most part) have established design departments. Having a design culture not only means that everyone in the company knows what UX is, but also respects what value they bring to the table.

One good rule of thumb is to check if their design department has its own website, blog, or social media presence.

Are there any interview-style posts out there on the internet with a design lead at that company explaining their Design Thought Leadership?

If not, it's unlikely that the design culture at that company is very established.