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How To

How to write the best resume in Google Docs

How to write the best resume in Google Docs
Trevor Hutchins

Trevor Hutchins

  • Updated:

Google Documents, among many other things, offers a few great tools for creating a resume.

Resume image

Whether you’re a high school graduate with just a few service credits looking to land the perfect first job, or a career veteran planning to move to new pastures, this program can help you make a good first impression. We’ll first discuss templates, then move on to building your own.

Templates

To find the templates, first visit the Google Docs homepage. There, you should see “New Document” with five more options for templates:

These are either defaults, or the most recent document types you’ve selected. To find more resumes, open “Template Gallery”, and scroll down the resume section to find all five options in this category:

From here, you can choose whatever you like! We’ll quickly discuss their qualities next.

Specific Templates

Looking to make a resume quickly? If you’d like to glance at the layout, we’ve images of each, with a short appraisal:

Swiss – a good start, although there are some issues: the format looks hard to adjust. If you needed to add a degree at the top, or include another section, it may be difficult to maintain the form. Still, the emphasis of your current position in red could be a great way to highlight the qualifications given to your job or status, and the overall look is very clean, if bunched.

Serif – the black and blue colors maintain a higher level of professionalism, but the inclusion of two columns may cramp your style, depending on the length of your experience, education, skills, and so on. However, having both sides may make navigating easier.

Coral – simple and straightforward! The sections are in order, the colors are bright, and your name includes an introduction. This doesn’t look quite as professional as the others, but depending on the situation, it may be just the ticket.

Spearmint – green… it’s a bit eccentric, but why not? If your personality screams spearmint green, this resume could be right up your alley. Most resumes we’ve seen are straight black and white, so all these templates are in actuality more ostentatious than usual. Of course, you could always remove the color within the document – in that case, this resume’s format and top line will still look quite good.

Modern Writer – this resume works on a lot of levels: “Your Name” is clearly at the top with contact information nearby. The sections also have bullet points where you can describe the specifics of each credit, which is a plus (also included in Spearmint and Coral). All in all, probably the most mainstream choice. Again, aside from the color.

Make Your Own

If you wish to make your own resume, remember the basics:

1. Name and contact information. The business you’re applying to needs to be able to find you. Include your email, phone number, and home address… or email, at the very least.

2. Skills. Feel free to change your skills for each job you apply to. For general submissions, the items in this section should be qualifications that apply to most jobs. In the modern era, knowledge of useful office software programs will often be a huge plus.

3. Experience, Education, Awards, and Service. What other jobs did you perform that qualify you for the position, and what did you do at those jobs which will help in your new job? Were you awarded at any point (did you work above and beyond your peers)? And finally, what can your education add to the mix? Did you serve your community somewhere?

Every detail, like time spent at the job or place, could matter to the interviewer. For example, if you don’t say how long you worked somewhere, they may assume it wasn’t for long at all.

Oh, and don’t lie! This often comes back in terrible ways. Usually.

A Few Useful Tools

Resume’s often can benefit from the use of these tools: use them to emphasize titles, define sections, and overall make your resume look more appealing.

1. General text tools

In Google Docs, these are located in the toolbar, in the middle. Use them to choose your font, size, and then change the look with bold, italics, underlines, color, and highlight. Well… maybe not highlight. Probably best to stay away from highlights in a resume. But hey, you do you.

2. Horizontal lines

Horizontal lines look great on a resume. Why? Probably because they define sections well, allowing the reader’s eye to quickly pick up information. And trust us, human resources workers have a lot of resumes to read, and will appreciate the help.

The horizontal line button is located within the “insert” tab, underneath “Chart”.

3. Columns and Spacing

Likely to save space, Google hides their columns button in the “Format” tab. Most professional resumes don’t require columns, but some (acting resumes, for example) require the inclusion of multiple columns for each section.

Aside from that, you’ll also find some useful spacing tools here. If your resume is heavy or light, adjusting margins and spacing can fill it out, or shrink it back down to one page. There’s no shame here, as long as you’re not falsifying history. Make your resume look good, then let the credits speak for themselves!

The End

Now, we hope you have a few more tools prepared for the resume writing process. Google Docs provides a workplace well suited to the task, and every one of their templates can work exceptionally for the right user.

Even if you decide to make your own, we recommend looking at the templates for reference when designing your own layout. Google’s style can offer useful guidelines while you mold the resume of your dreams. Happy job hunting!

Trevor Hutchins

Trevor Hutchins

Trevor Hutchins writes screenplays, novels, and articles from his home in La Mirada, California. He self-published hist first novel, 'Wynden's Legacy,' on Amazon in May of 2017 and hasn't stopped writing since.

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