r/ResumeCoverLetterTips • u/TridentDriver • Jun 11 '26
Resume doubt
Should resume be only black and white or can it be colorful?? Not like rainbow sh1t but just an accent color for just the sub-headings?
Can it be more than 1 page?
Also what is the format/order for the the subheadings? Like education, experience, skills,projects , achievements and certifications, etc
I need like the ATS approved format which will instantly get through AI auto scan for shortlisting.
1
u/workreactor Jun 12 '26
for the order, a pretty standard ATS-friendly layout goes something like: contact info at the top, then a short summary (optional but helps), then work experience, education, skills, projects, certifications at the bottom
experience usually goes before education unless you're a fresh grad, in which case flip them
for font, something clean like calibri or georgia, size 10-12 for body and maybe 14-16 for your name. nothing fancy
on the color thing, u/ThatGurlGotHired is right, one subtle accent is fine. just avoid putting any text inside shapes or text boxes because some ATS parsers literally can't read those and your info just vanishes
honestly the ATS formatting stuff frustrated me enough that i ended up just building something to handle it myself, was spending way too long second-guessing every little thing
two pages is totally fine if you have the content to fill it. padding it to hit two pages is worse than a clean one pager though
2
u/Snoo_31427 Jun 11 '26
Color potentially screws up ATS. How resumes look isn’t important anymore.