Professional Resume Layout - Examples and Great Tips

Ensuring that you have a great professional resume layout is critical to making yourself stand out among the job searching competition. In addition to the words on the actual resume itself, how you present it to an employer is very important.

Whether you are going to a career fair or going to an interview, you will need to have printed examples of your resume on hand. As always, you want these to have the most professional appearance possible. To achieve this, make sure that you print your resume on on high quality, heavy weight paper. This type of paper has a thicker, more expensive feel to it. Additionally, when printing them out, make sure to use the highest quality setting on your printer. If you do not have a printer capable of quality prints, head to a local printing shop or Kinko's to get this done. You will want to store your resumes in a professional looking binder, preferably leather bound.

No one will take your professional resume layout that you have worked so hard on serious if you yourself do not come off as professional. Follow the usual advice of dressing nicely for the interview or career fair. It can't hurt to be too dressed up for the occasion. Additionally, spend some time practicing a strong, firm hand shake prior to the event itself. If this is the first time a prospective employer is meeting you, the first thing they see will be how you present yourself and not your resume. Make sure that both come off as very professional.

By following these tips you will be well on your way toward generating a professional looking resume layout that will help you land that high end position.

Resume Layout - Examples

One of the best ways to understand how to create the best resume layout, is by viewing some resume layout examples. We're fortunate enough to have some resumes that readers sent to us that we've made anonymous and added comments to.

The first resume layout example below is an architect's resume.

Notice the overall style of the resume layout is relatively artistic, which makes sense given that architecture involves a lot of design. Other types of professions that might benefit from this "designed" resume layout style are web designers, graphic designers, artists, and authors. The owner of this resume layout also does a very nice job in the experience section of highlighting what they did and what skills/knowledge they developed while doing it. We consistently try to stress the importance of identifying not just what you did in your resume layout, but how you did it and what you learned that will benefit potential employers.

Now let's take a look at a significantly different type of resume layout below.

This resume comes to us from someone in the engineering profession. As engineering is less artistic and more hard science, this resume layout lacks some of the "designed" feel from the earlier example. This reader took the time to edit the resume layout to give tips inside the document. Since he did much of our job for us, the main additional things to highlight are the general uncluttered layout and ease with which the resume layout can be scanned. Remember that employers will not spend minutes viewing your resume layout, only seconds. For this reason, it's critical that you use a resume layout that is very easy for the reader to quickly scan and see the important points that you want to highlight.

Thanks again to the brave readers who volunteered their resume layouts for us. Be sure to update your resume along the way as you read our site so you don't forget what you've learned. Make sure to check our other free advice at Resume Layout Advice.