Make A Resume In Word
Word 2010 has all the tools to enable you to create a good looking resume from scratch. However, it will save you a heap of time if you take advantage of Word’s huge selection of templates on which to base your new resume. At the last count there were nearly 100 resume templates that you could use.
To get started making a resume in Word, click the File tab > New. A whole host of template categories is displayed:
Click to enlarge
Towards the bottom is the Resumes and CVs category – click on that to select it and view all resume templates within. In the resume category, we find a further three categories:
- Basic resumes
- Job-specific resumes
- Situation-specific resumes
We’ll keep it simple here and just select the Basic resumes sub-category.
One thing to note when looking at the templates on display is the little figure-like symbol shown in the bottom right corner of some of the templates.
This symbol indicates that the template was created by a member of the public, and was generously uploaded for us to use. Templates that don’t display this symbol were created and provided by Microsoft.
When you select a resume template, a small preview appears to the right of the workspace, along with some basic details about it, such as who provided the template, what the download size is and what its average rating is. The rating score is useful, as it enables you to filter out bad designs (you have a good idea that a template that has 200 votes and an average score of 1 out of 5 isn’t likely to be suitable).
You can get a good idea of what the resume will look like from the preview; if you think it fits your requirements, click the Download button. Word will create a new document based on the template you selected. You can then change it in any way you see fit. Your new resume document contains placeholder text such as [Type your name], [Type your email] etc. Simply overtype this text with what should appear there. These templates make it a fairly easy process to replace placeholder text with real content to create your new resume.
Because it’s a new document, you should save it with a meaningful name before you print it or email it, so that you can always refer to it at a later date, and possibly make changes.