Author: Brae Troutman, Student Technology Consultant

Throughout my college career, I’ve heard many varying opinions about what visually constitutes a good resume. On one end I’ve been encouraged to format everything in a very plain and regular manner so that automatic parsing programs used to filter through applicants can more easily read it’s content. On the other, it seems that adding a pop of color or other creative aspect to your resume can help it stand out when a human being is going through your resume personally.

While both camps certainly have their merit and justification, I had the pleasure of taking part in an Adobe InDesign workshop where we worked on a resume overhaul.

InDesign is a digital publishing application that allows you to set up layouts for printable and shareable documents like brochures, fliers, and resumes of course! A resume built in InDesign can contain all the same information as a plain word-document (and remain just as machine-parsable), but allows you to arrange the text in an interesting way, and even include graphics and color to make your resume stand out.

Here is an example showing the layout of the same resume before vs now after working with InDesign:

Both are totally valid and applicable designs, and both contain the same information ultimately. The second catches my attention better though, and shows a bit more creativity and initiative in the layout (although it is certainly still a work in progress on my part.) Even using InDesign I still tend to lean to the conservative side in my design, but even this small
difference in a columnar layout and adding a bit of color can really have an impact on the appeal of a resume to a human reviewer. Of course, some positions that lend themselves more to creative and artistic work might be due for even more quirky design– it all depends on how and with what you want to present yourself as a candidate! Either way, taking a look at InDesign for your next publishing project can certainly bring some new (possibly resume worthy?) skills to your repertoire!