Straight answer: A well-formatted Word resume uses one column, a standard font like Calibri or Arial at 11pt, 1 inch margins, section headings built with Word's Heading styles rather than text boxes, and no tables, columns or graphics that hiring software can't read. Save it as a.docx file named with your full name, not "Resume Final v3." Get those things right and you've beaten most of the applicant pool before you've written a single bullet point.
Why this still matters in 2026
Word is still the default. Job boards ask for it, recruiters open CVs in it, and applicant tracking systems (ATS) are built to pull text out of it. Around 97% of Fortune 500 companies and a huge chunk of small and mid-size employers run some form of ATS before a human ever sees your CV, according to research widely cited by career sites and reported by outlets like Forbes. If Word mangles your formatting, or if your layout confuses that software, your CV can get dropped or scored badly before anyone reads a word you wrote.
I've sat on the other side of this. When I was rebuilding my own business and hiring a part-time assistant, I had 40 or so CVs land in my inbox in a week. At least a dozen were built from those pretty two-column templates you find in Word's own template gallery or downloaded from Canva. On my laptop, three of them opened with the photo overlapping the text, one had a whole column of "skills" sitting on top of the work history, and two had contact details tucked into a header that simply vanished when I printed one out to scribble notes on. None of those candidates did anything wrong on purpose. The template did it to them.
Start with a blank document, not a template
This is the bit most career blogs won't tell you plainly, so I will: those polished, colour-block, icon-heavy resume templates that look brilliant in the preview thumbnail are often the worst choice you can make. Two reasons.
- ATS software parses resumes by reading text in a linear order, top to bottom, left to right. Multi-column layouts, text boxes and graphics either get scrambled into the wrong order or skipped entirely. Your "5 years of project management experience" can end up parsed as gibberish sitting next to your hobbies.
- Formatting doesn't travel well between machines. A layout built on your version of Word can shift, overlap or resize on someone else's, especially if they're on an older version, a Mac, or opening it through a browser preview inside a recruitment portal.
So open Word, go to File, then New, then choose Blank document. Not the Resume category. Blank. Everything else in this post is built on top of that one decision.
The exact settings I'd use
Here's the step-by-step version, the settings I'd talk a client through if we were sat at my kitchen table with a laptop:
- Layout tab, Margins, choose Normal (2.54cm / 1 inch all round). If you're tight for space, Narrow (1.27cm) is fine. Don't go below that, it looks cramped even on screen.
- Home tab, Font, pick Calibri, Arial, or Garamond at 11pt for body text. Times New Roman still works but it reads as dated to most recruiters under 45. Avoid anything script-style or condensed.
- Your name at the top: 16 to 18pt, bold. Job title underneath if you use one: 12pt, not bold.
- Line spacing: 1.0 or 1.15, set through Home, Line and Paragraph Spacing. Single spacing with a gap of 6 to 8pt after each paragraph reads cleaner than double spacing, which just wastes room.
- Section headings (Experience, Education, Skills): use Word's built-in Heading 2 style rather than just bolding text manually. This keeps your document structured underneath the surface, which matters for both ATS parsing and for anyone using accessibility software to read it.
- Bullet points for job duties and achievements: Home tab, Bullets. Use the simple round bullet, not an arrow, tick, or custom symbol from the gallery, some of those don't survive being opened on another machine.
Structure it so software can read it
Beyond the visual settings, there are structural traps that look fine to your eye but break parsing software:
- Never put your name, phone number or email inside a header or footer. A lot of ATS software ignores headers and footers completely, so your contact details effectively disappear. Put them as regular text at the top of the body.
- Avoid text boxes entirely. Anything typed inside a Word text box is often invisible to parsing software, which means an entire section can vanish from the version the system reads, even though it looks perfectly normal to you.
- Skip tables for laying out skills or dates. Tables force column-based reading, which scrambles order. If you want two things side by side, like a job title and dates, use a tab stop instead.
- Turn off automatic hyperlink formatting for your email address (right click the link, Remove Hyperlink) so it doesn't show up as bright blue underlined text, which reads as unprofessional on a printed copy.
- Keep to one font family throughout. Mixing two or three "for interest" is one of the fastest ways to make a CV look unfinished.
Formatting the content, not just the page
Once the container is right, the content needs the same discipline:
- One page if you have under 10 years of experience. Two pages if you have more. Nobody with 6 years in one industry needs three pages, and stretching it doesn't make you look more accomplished, it makes you look like you can't edit.
- Start bullet points with a strong verb: led, built, cut, grew, negotiated. Not "responsible for."
- Include a number wherever you honestly can. "Grew email list from 2,000 to 14,000 in 11 months" beats "improved email marketing" every time. Recruiters and hiring managers scan for numbers because numbers are proof.
- Keep dates in one consistent format throughout: either "Jan 2022 to Mar 2024" or "01/2022 to 03/2024," pick one and stick to it. A mix looks careless and it's one of the fastest ways to lose credibility in the first ten seconds.
On that ten seconds: research popularised by the recruitment platform Ladders using eye-tracking software found recruiters spend roughly 7 seconds on an initial scan of a CV. That's the uncomfortable truth underneath all of this. Nobody is reading your resume top to bottom on the first pass. They're scanning for shape: is it clean, is it structured, can they find the last job title and the dates in under a second. A busy, "creative" layout doesn't win that scan. A boring, well-organised one does.
Saving and naming the file
Small thing, gets overlooked constantly:
- Save as.docx, not the older.doc format, through File, Save As. Some ATS platforms handle older formats badly.
- Only save as PDF if the job listing specifically asks for one. Some ATS software still struggles to extract text cleanly from PDFs, particularly older or smaller company systems, whereas a clean.docx is read reliably almost everywhere.
- Name the file with your actual name: "Sarah-Jenkins-Resume.docx", not "CV Final 2.docx" or "Resume (1).docx". Recruiters download dozens of files a day and a generic name is harder to find again when they're deciding who to shortlist.
A quick gut check before you send it
Two tests I'd run on any Word resume before it goes out:
Want AI doing the heavy lifting in your marketing?
I build the systems that handle the boring 80 percent, so you get your week back. Done properly, with the human kept in.
- Open it on a different device, or email it to yourself and open it on your phone. If anything shifts, overlaps, or disappears, fix the layout before it goes anywhere near an employer.
- Copy the entire document, paste it into a blank Notepad file, and read what comes out. That plain text version is roughly what a lot of ATS software sees. If your job titles, company names and dates are jumbled or missing, your layout needs simplifying, not decorating further.
None of this is glamorous advice. It won't make your CV look like the design-led ones people share on LinkedIn as "inspiration." But a clean, correctly structured Word document that a machine can parse and a human can scan in under 7 seconds will consistently outperform a beautiful one that gets stuck at the first hurdle. For more background on how these systems work, Wikipedia's page on applicant tracking systems is a decent starting point if you want to understand what's happening behind the upload button.
Frequently asked questions
What's the best font for a resume in Microsoft Word?
Calibri, Arial, or Garamond at 11pt for the body text, with your name at 16 to 18pt bold at the top. Avoid Times New Roman if you want to read as current, and never mix more than one font family in a single document.
Should I save my resume as a PDF or a Word document?
Save it as a.docx unless the job listing specifically requests a PDF. Some applicant tracking systems still struggle to extract text cleanly from PDFs, while a structured Word file reads reliably across almost every platform.
Are Microsoft Word's built-in resume templates safe to use?
Generally, no. Most of the built-in and downloadable templates use columns, text boxes, or graphic elements that either get scrambled or ignored by applicant tracking software, and can shift or overlap when opened on a different device. A blank document with simple, consistent formatting is far more reliable.
How long should a resume be when formatted correctly in Word?
One page if you have under 10 years of experience, two pages if you have more. Length beyond that rarely helps and often signals that the content needs editing rather than expanding.
Related reading: How to Pick a Resume Template That Suits a Nursing Career and What Makes a Good Excel Checklist Template for Daily Tasks.
Related: What Should a Resume Template Include for Busy Professionals
