Word Tips for Resumes
For
those of you who are Word gurus, you can skip this section. Here
are a summary of tricks I've picked up while writing resumes over
the years.
How to
set margins:
Go to File
->Page Setup.
Set your
margins for no less than 1" all around. Anything smaller
looks crowded.
How to
set font characteristics:
I do not
recommend mixing font types within a resume, but there are things
you can do to set font size and characteristics. I recommend
Times New Roman (most likely your default fort). Don't overdo
it with the characteristics. You should need no more than a
half dozen "styles" to get through a resume.
To apply
a style to text, highlight the text you want to which you want
to apply the style and use the icons and windows indicated below.
Font Characteristics:
Use the following icons on the toolbar to make bold, underlined
and italicized text.
How to
set font size:
Use the
following window to set the font size.
I recommend
using font size 12 for headlines and 11 for plain text. You
can use larger fonts for headers if you wish, but I certainly
would not go smaller.
How to
set line justification:
There are
4 kinds of justification:
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Left
justified - text is flush against the left margin |
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Center
justified - text is centered in the field |
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Right
justified - text is flush against the right margin |
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Full
justified - text is flush against both margins. |
Full justification
looks neat if you are putting multiple columns on the page as
in a newspaper. However, unless you use a lot of short words
and hyphenation the paragraph can spread out and you will have
big gaps in the text. While I recommend small words on a resume
(they are easier to read), I do not recommend hyphenation (other
than for grammatical purposes).
Cloning
a style
Once you
get a block of text looking like you want it, you can apply
that style anywhere else. To do this highlight a sample of the
style you want to clone, click on the paintbrush icon:
The
button will "indent" indicating that it is selected.
Then highlight the text to which you want to apply the style.
When you release the mouse button, the style of the originally
highlighted text will be applied.
Making
half-lines
Sometimes
that last job description on the page runs over by a line or two.
I recommend using plenty of white space in resumes. This normally
means that I put a full blank line between one section and the
next. You can reclaim some extra lines if you need them by adding
in a half blank line. To do this, eliminate the full blank line,
and place the cursor on the line after which you want to place
the half blank line.
Then select
Format -> Paragraph. This action brings up the following dialogue
box.
Click in
the "After" box and set it to 6 pt. You can either
type in a number or use the up and down arrows. I do not recommend
setting the space to less than 6 points.
An alternative
method of half spacing is to place a full line return between
the sections and adjust it. First of all, you have to be able
to see the line return.
To do this
find the following symbol, 
on the toolbar and click it on. This will allow you to see tabs,
line returns and other symbols that are in the document, but
not printed.
Highlight
the line return and set it's size using the font size drop down
window as described above.
Changing
headings footers
I recommend
having your name on each page of your resume. Your name is obviously
on the first page of the resume. To get it on subsequent pages,
in an unobtrusive place, I suggest you put it in the footer.
To do this
go to page 2 of your resume (assuming you have more than one
page), and select View ® Header and footer. This action
brings up the following dialogue box.
Select "Switch
Between Header and Footer" When you do this, your normal
text will be grayed out.
The footer
paragraph has a default style:
Then click
on the "#" icon. This action will put the page number
in the footer.
Highlight
the whole thing and reduce the point size to 8.
The problem
you have now is that the footer also appears on the first page
as well.
To clear
this select page setup from the footer menu
Then select
different first page.
Use
tables
Tables can help
you organize things on the page. They are a lot more dependable
and versatile than trying to use tabs. Tables allow you to
make mutli-columned bulleted lists, or allow you to left justify
a job description and right justify dates on the same line.
You will have to
learn how to turn off borders to make this trick work. Suppose
you want to list your technical skills. First put them in
a table like so:
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highlight the table and click on the following icon |
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Your table should
now look like:
Don't worry about
the light lines. They will not print on a printer. It will
come out looking like:
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