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Resume templates

Resume templates that follow US hiring conventions

A US resume is a shorter, plainer document than a CV, and the conventions are unusually consistent: one page, Letter paper, no photograph, reverse-chronological, and a summary rather than an objective. Every template below is chosen to fit that shape rather than fight it.

What US recruiters expect

The conventions below are not aesthetic preferences. Most of them exist because a US hiring process is legally cautious, moves quickly through a large volume of applications, and expects the same information in the same order every time. Meeting them costs you nothing and removes every reason to put your file down early.

One page, until roughly ten years in

Under about a decade of experience, a resume that runs to two pages usually means the first page has not been edited. Beyond a decade, or in academia, medicine and federal hiring, two or more pages is normal. The test is not the page count but whether the second page is carrying its weight: if it holds a skills list and your degree, it does not.

US Letter, not A4

Letter is 8.5 × 11 in, wider and shorter than A4. Sending an A4 layout to a US employer is not fatal — most files are read on screen — but if it is printed for a panel interview it prints with an odd margin or scales down slightly, and the line breaks you carefully tuned move. Set the paper size to Letter before you spend an hour on spacing.

No photo, no date of birth, no marital status

Leave all three off. US employers are cautious about receiving information that could later be said to have influenced a hiring decision, and it is widely reported that some recruitment teams will not forward a resume that carries a photograph. Nationality, religion, gender and number of children have no place on the document either. The only personal information a US resume needs is a name, a phone number, an email address, a city and state, and a LinkedIn URL if the profile is worth reading.

Reverse-chronological, with dates that survive scrutiny

Most recent role first, then backwards. Purely functional resumes — skills grouped by theme with the employment history buried at the bottom — are read as an attempt to hide something, fairly or not. A hybrid, where a short skills or core-competencies block sits above a full reverse-chronological history, is perfectly acceptable. Include months as well as years, and keep one date format throughout.

A summary, not an objective

The three or four lines under your name are the most re-read part of the document. Use them to state what you are, how long you have done it and what you are demonstrably good at: Supply chain analyst, six years in consumer goods. Owns demand forecasting for a 400-SKU portfolio; cut stockouts by a third in eighteen months. That is a summary. Seeking a challenging role where I can grow my skills is an objective, and it tells the reader nothing they can act on.

Six templates that match those conventions

All single-column, all designed for a full page without padding, all free to use on the starter plan unless marked otherwise.

ATS Resume

ATS-friendly · one column

Free

The safe default for portal applications

ATS 5/5

One column, no rules, no tinted panels and section headings a parser has seen ten thousand times. If you are uploading to a company careers portal and have no other information to go on, this is the version to send.

Modern Professional

modern · one column

Free

A little design, none of the risk

ATS 5/5

A single accent colour on the headings and nothing else decorative. It reads as a considered document rather than a plain-text dump, while keeping every line in one uninterrupted reading order.

Modern Clean

modern · one column

Free

Tight vertical rhythm for a full page

ATS 5/5

The spacing between sections is deliberately compact, which is what lets eight or nine years of work land on one page without dropping the type size. Choose this when you are one or two lines over.

Entry-Level Resume

ATS-friendly · one column

Free

Education before experience

ATS 5/5

Ordered the way a graduate resume should be: degree and coursework near the top, internships and part-time work below. It gives a short history a full page without padding it with filler sections.

Business Professional

corporate · one column

Free

For finance, consulting and corporate roles

ATS 5/5

Restrained typography, generous margins and a strong summary block at the top. It suits the sectors where a resume is judged on rigour first and the reader expects to find every date without hunting.

Simple Classic

classic · one column

Free

When you know nothing about the reader

ATS 5/5

Black text, bold headings, no rules or boxes anywhere. It photocopies, prints, scans and parses identically, which matters for government, legal, healthcare and any employer still working from paper.

Cutting a long career down to one page

Almost nobody writes a one-page resume; they edit one. The order below removes the most space for the least loss, and it is worth doing in that order rather than starting with the font size.

  • Condense anything older than fifteen years into one line. A single “Earlier roles” entry with titles, employers and a date range preserves the record and reclaims a third of a page.
  • Ration your bullets by recency. Four or five for the current role, two or three for the one before, one for anything older. Nobody is hiring you for what you did in 2013.
  • Delete every bullet that describes the job rather than your work in it. “Responsible for managing the monthly close” is the job description. “Cut the monthly close from nine days to five” is you.
  • Trim the skills list to what you would happily be tested on. A twenty-item list dilutes the five things you are actually strong at, and interviewers do pick from it.
  • Put contact details on one line. City, state, phone, email and LinkedIn fit comfortably across a single line under your name and save four.
  • Drop interests unless they are relevant. Marathon running is not evidence. A part-time role coaching a youth team is, if you are applying to manage people.

What not to do: shrink the body text below about 10pt, cut margins below half an inch, or reduce the line spacing until the page is grey. A cramped resume signals a candidate who could not decide what mattered, which is precisely the impression the edit was meant to avoid.

Single-column, no-photo layouts

27 of the templates are one column with no photo block and a strong parsing score — the exact shape a US resume is expected to take.

Modern ATS

modern · one column

Free

Modern Minimal

modern · one column

Free

Modern Tech

modern · one column

Pro

Business Professional

corporate · one column

Free

Consultant CV

corporate · one column

Pro

Corporate Executive

corporate · one column

Pro

Finance CV

corporate · one column

Pro

Operations CV

corporate · one column

Pro

Sales CV

corporate · one column

Pro

Data Scientist

technology · one column

Pro

Switching template never changes your content: the same data renders into any of the 56 designs, so you can compare two layouts side by side and export whichever one holds your history on a single page.

Frequently asked questions

Length, dates, summaries and the questions that come up when a CV is rewritten for the US market.

One page is the expectation for anyone with under roughly ten years of experience, and it is the safest choice for almost every applicant below director level. Two pages is accepted once you have a long record with genuinely different roles on it, and is normal in academia, medicine and for federal applications, which follow their own rules entirely. The failure mode is not length itself — it is a second page that adds nothing. If page two would be education, a certifications list and three lines of skills, move them up and stay on one page.