Why? You want to see if it's readable. Is it a book you will be able to read…will want to read?
Is there good use of white space? Graphics? Are the paragraphs short? Or what?
For whatever reasons, this book must have looked inviting to you readable. The same is true with resumes!
The first requirement of your resume is that it must be inviting to the eye. If it isn't, it won't even get read!
The potential resume reader (just like the potential book reader) looks at the following things:
- Are the sentences short? With easy/short words?
- Is there adequate spacing between lines?
- Are there many short one sentence or two sentence paragraphs? (If the words... the sentences... and the paragraphs are long, involved, and uninviting, no one will read them.)
Leisure writing, consumer magazine articles, newspapers, and advertising copy are written differently. Their authors know that readers of such things will not have the time for serious study.
So it is with your resume. You've got one chance.
Think now about the leisure reading you do. What does it look like? Is it difficult or is it easy?
It's easy. E A S Y to read. Once through, and you know what you have read! That's what your resume should be.
Magazines, newspapers, and advertising copy are all written in a way (using a special format) that makes them inviting to the eye.
That format is something you already know about: C O L U M N S.
Write your resume in a column format! Why? Because, it makes your resume easy to scan, and that, my friends, is all the reader wants to do with it.
So give them what they want. Give them something easy to read.
How Do You Read, Learn, And Enjoy?
Eye brain coordination is a miraculous thing. If the eye grabs four, five, six words at a time in a split second the brain can put those words in order and make sense of them.
The principle of speed reading says that you can, with your finger as a pacing guide, zoom down the center of a column or a page and let your brain grab the words within your eye's field of vision.
The brain then sorts them into the right order almost automatically as fast as your finger can move down that page!
When your eye must read across long lines of type (and especially lines with long words), more concentration is required. Your brain has to think about the meaning of long, unfamiliar words. And eye fatigue results from eye travel across long lines.
How The Eye Travels Across The Page
Note that the eye travels along the words in one line. Then, it must travel back across the page, right to left, and seek out the beginning of the next line.
As the eye travels first one direction, then the other, then forward again, it travels twice the distance you might, at first, think that it does.
The eye tires quickly. So when you look at a book to see if you might wish to purchase it, a book with "all words and very little space" looks difficult to read.
The same is true of a resume. If it contains little white space, and if it is too crowded (especially with long words), the reader gets a very negative first impression!
How Your Eyes Read A Column
You can read down a column of words (with very little traveling) and let your marvelous brain do all the work! Your eyes don't get tired going all that distance and back again.
The marketing approach provides openness and white space to prevent eye fatigue. It takes into account the feelings and attitudes of the "market," the person reading your resume.
The person reading the resume knows, at first glance, that this will be easy to read.
Even if the employer is going through a group of resumes very quickly, the ones that look easiest to read are likely to be given preference.
Use Columns for Eye Appeal
When using a column format, use only one column, not two. Any width is acceptable, as long as it is easy to read. I prefer narrow columns ones not exceeding about 50 60 percent of a page width (about 4 5 inches on a normal page).
Think in terms of "less is better." Keeps your resume clean looking, with plenty of white space if at all possible.
The reader of your resume may not have the faintest idea about what makes his or her eyes tired... or what makes a page readable. A resume that is easy to read sends the message that "This job seeker is making my job easier."
Their eyes do tell them what they (the eyes) like to read and what they don't like to read.
Keep this in mind when designing the final draft of your resume. And use columns to present your information. Columns immediately convey a message.
