The short version: Open Google Docs, go to Template Gallery, pick one of the plain single-column resume templates (not the ones with sidebars or icons), then adjust the margins, font, and spacing before you type a word. The template gets you 70 percent of the way there, but the last 30 percent, the bit that decides whether your resume gets read by a person, comes down to choices most people never think to make.
I’ve formatted more resumes than I can count over the years, my own included, and I’ve watched enough job hunts up close (my nephew, two former assistants, a handful of people I’ve mentored while rebuilding my own business) to know that the template is never the whole problem. But it’s where most people start, so let’s start there too.
Where to find the templates and which ones to skip
In Google Docs, click the plus sign to start a new document, then look for “Template gallery” at the top. If you don’t see it, go to docs.google.com/templates directly. Scroll down to the Resumes section and you’ll find around ten options, usually named things like Coral, Spearmint, Serif, and Modern Writer.
Here’s what nobody tells you when they write “here’s how to use Google Docs templates” as if any of them will do: several of the nicest-looking ones are built with tables or text boxes, and those two things are exactly what trips up applicant tracking systems. A resume built inside a table can read to an ATS as a jumble of disconnected cells rather than one flowing document. I found this out the hard way when I was helping a bootcamp graduate named Josh rewrite his CV two years ago. He’d used one of the two-column templates, name and photo on the left, experience on the right, and it looked sharp on screen. He applied to eleven jobs and got zero responses. We copied the text into a single-column template with no tables, no boxes, just headings and paragraphs, and he had two interviews within a fortnight from the same round of applications elsewhere. Nothing about his experience changed. The structure did.
So my rule now is simple: pick the plainest template in the gallery, the one that looks almost boring, single column, no headshot, no coloured sidebar. You can find a fuller rundown of which specific templates hold up best, and where else to source them, in this list of free resume templates worth downloading.
The step-by-step way to format it once you’ve picked one
Once you’ve opened a template, don’t just start typing over the placeholder text. Set the bones first.
- Go to File then Page setup and set your margins to between 0.7 and 1 inch on all sides. Most templates default to 1 inch, which is fine, but don’t let anyone talk you into shrinking margins below 0.5 inch to cram in more text. It looks cramped and it reads as desperate.
- Pick one font for the whole document. Arial, Calibri, or Georgia all read cleanly on screen and in print, and all three are recognised by most ATS software. Avoid anything decorative, and avoid mixing two fonts even if the template ships with two by default (a lot of them pair a serif heading font with a sans-serif body font, which looks nice but adds a step of visual noise you don’t need).
- Set body text to 11 or 12 point. Your name at the top can be 16 to 18 point. Section headings (Experience, Education, Skills) should sit at 13 or 14 point, bold.
- Use Google Docs’ built-in Styles menu (the dropdown that says “Normal text” near the toolbar) rather than manually bolding and resizing each heading. Select your section title, click the Styles dropdown, choose Heading 2, then update the style to match your chosen font and size. Do this once and every future heading you apply that style to will match automatically.
- Keep bullet points to the standard round or square bullet, not the arrows, checkmarks, or icons some templates include by default. Highlight your bullets, click the bullet list icon, and choose the plainest option in the dropdown.
- Check line spacing. Single spacing between bullet points, with a small gap (roughly 6pt) between sections, keeps a one-page resume looking full without feeling crowded.
If you’re building from scratch instead of a downloaded template, the same principles apply, and you can do the whole thing without ever opening the gallery. I’ve written a separate walkthrough on writing a resume using a free online document tool if you’d rather start with a blank page and build your own structure from nothing.
Why length still matters more than people admit
One page if you have under ten years of experience. Two pages if you have more than that, and even then, only if every line on that second page earns its place. I still see people with four years of experience submitting two-and-a-half-page resumes because the template made it easy to keep adding sections. A template doesn’t know when to stop. You do.
A quick way to check: highlight your whole document, then look at the word count under Tools then Word count. A one-page resume in a standard template usually sits between 400 and 550 words. If you’re at 700 words and still on one page, your font is probably too small or your margins too tight, and you’ve likely gone past the point where it’s comfortable to read in the six or seven seconds a recruiter gives it.
The part that decides whether a machine reads it before a human does
Most applications today go through some form of applicant tracking system before a person ever opens the file. Google Docs templates were not built with this in mind, they were built to look good, which is a different job entirely.
Here’s the uncomfortable bit: a template with a graphic skill bar showing “Excel: 80%” or a sidebar listing your contact details in a coloured box might look more designed, but a lot of ATS parsers either misread that information or drop it completely. I tested this myself with three different resume versions built from the same content, one plain single-column, one with a sidebar, and one with a skills graphic, running each through a free ATS-simulator. The plain version pulled every field correctly. The sidebar version scattered my phone number and email into the wrong fields. The graphic version simply left my skills section blank in the parsed output. Nobody applying with that template would ever know why they weren’t getting called back.
If you want the fuller version of what a parser is checking for, section headers, standard date formats, consistent job titles, this piece on what an ATS friendly resume template needs goes through it. And if you’re using any AI tool to help write or polish the content itself, it’s worth reading what a good AI resume builder should include to pass ATS checks before you trust the output blindly, because plenty of them still generate the same table-based layouts that cause the problem in the first place.
Naming, saving, and sending it without losing the formatting
This is where a lot of good formatting work gets undone in the last thirty seconds. Go to File, then Download, then choose PDF Document. Do not use “Share” to generate a link, and do not send the native Google Doc link as your resume, because a hiring manager who doesn’t have a Google account, or who’s viewing on a locked-down work laptop, may not be able to open it at all.
Name the file clearly: firstname-lastname-resume.pdf. Not “Resume Final V3” and not “Untitled document.pdf”, both of which I’ve received when reviewing CVs for people, and both of which make a small but real dent in how put-together the application feels before anyone’s read a word.
Check the file size too. A resume with a headshot or heavy background colour can balloon past 2MB, which some older company portals will simply reject on upload. Keep it under 500KB if you can. A plain-text, single-column resume with no images almost always comes in under 150KB.
Turning it into something you’ll reuse
Once you’ve got the formatting right, don’t rebuild it from scratch every time you apply somewhere new. Save your finished version as a template of your own inside Google Docs (File, then “Save as template” if you’re on a Workspace account, or just keep a master copy in a dedicated folder if you’re on a personal account) so you can duplicate it and swap in the details for each role. I go through exactly how to set this up so it doesn’t fall apart after the third edit in this guide to building reusable templates in Google Docs, and the same structure works for a matching cover letter, which I’ve covered separately in how to write a cover letter using Google Docs templates so the two documents look like they came from the same person rather than two different decades.
Mistakes I see over and over
- Using a template with a photo, which is standard in some European countries but can trigger unconscious bias concerns and get an application quietly filtered out in the UK and US.
- Leaving placeholder text in a footer or header that the applicant forgot to delete, “Company Name Here” tucked into the bottom margin.
- Changing font size mid-document because copy-pasting from another file brought its own formatting with it. Always paste using Ctrl+Shift+V (or Cmd+Shift+V on Mac) to strip formatting before it lands on your page.
- Justifying the text so both edges of the paragraph line up neatly, which looks tidy but creates odd spacing gaps between words that make dense text harder to scan.
- Two spaces after a full stop, a habit from typewriter days that some older templates still default to and that reads as slightly dated in a document meant to feel current.
Frequently asked questions
Is it fine to use a Google Docs template for a resume, or does it look unoriginal?
It’s fine. Hiring managers see hundreds of resumes and are not scoring you on template originality, they’re scanning for relevant experience in a familiar structure. A clean, well-formatted template signals that you can follow a standard, which is a good thing to signal.
Which Google Docs resume template is best for passing ATS checks?
The plainest single-column ones without sidebars, tables, or graphic skill bars. Templates named things like “Serif” or “Modern Writer” in the gallery tend to be safer than the two-column layouts, because ATS parsers read top to bottom and left to right, and columns confuse that order.
How do I know if my formatted resume will parse correctly?
Copy the entire text of your finished PDF and paste it into a plain text file. If the sections stay in a sensible order, your name isn’t merged with your job title, and nothing important has dropped out, it’s parsing reasonably well. This crude test catches the majority of formatting problems before you submit anywhere.
Should I save my Google Docs resume as a PDF or a Word document?
PDF, in almost every case. It locks your formatting so it looks the same on any device, and the vast majority of modern ATS platforms handle PDFs correctly. Only switch to a Word (.docx) file if an application specifically requests it, which happens occasionally with older recruitment systems.
Where to check the details
Related reading: Does Google Docs Have Resume Templates You Can Use for Free? and How to Fill In a Google Docs Invoice Template Correctly (Without the Numbering Chaos).
