The Resume Header
So you’re sitting in front of your computer. There’s a blank screen in front of you. What do you do first?
Write your name, obviously. Write your name in big, bold letters, as if it was an advertising sign promoting you (and that’s what is it, of course). First and last name. Middle name too, or middle initial, or nothing. Depends on what you like to use in your professional life.
There’s no need for Mr., Mrs., Ms. or anything else like that. Just your name. Though, if you do have a fancy title like, PHD, MD or some professional title that is important to landing the job, I do recommend you include that.
So there you go. This is your banner headline: ME!
By the way, my preference is for all capitals. How big do you go? I’d say that whatever feels right to you, but I wouldn’t go any higher than 20pt. or maybe 22pt. font size. Any font size within a range from 14pt. to 18pt. sounds about right to me. Try several different font sizes and go with what feels best. You want your name to be the biggest font size of anything else in your resume.
Should you center it? Left indent? Go for some crazy design? Again, if designing is your thing, and you happen to be a word processing wizard, then you can do whatever you want. My preference is for a nice, centered design, right there at the top. So let’s go with that for now. We’re just creating the banner headline, remember? So let’s make it basic to begin with, and you can go back and customize it later.
Now, underneath this, it’s time to put your contact info. For most people, I’d suggest limiting it to the following: address, phone number and email. For some people and industries, you could include a website or even a twitter name. But I’m mostly speaking here about designers, web professionals and the like. If your website or twitter page is part of your professional brand, then it’s ok to include. But if your Facebook or Twitter account is manly your personal domain, then leave it off.
What font should the contact info be in? What about font size? I suggest you make it be the same font or a similar font as you chose for your name. But let’s let the contact info be normal size. Normal size for basic resume text.
Basic resume text is no smaller than 10pt and no bigger than 12pt in size. That is a hard and fast rule of mine. Smaller than 10pt and it’s too hard for some people to read. Larger than 12pt and it looks like you’re padding out your resume, making the words really big to hide the fact that you don’t have much to put on your resume.
So let’s say you make your contact info be 12pt, which will be the same font size you use for the main body of your resume. But to make the contact info stand out, let’s make this section bold, while the rest of the resume will be normal text.
A note about design: after this header you’re going to get into meat of your resume. Remember, this part is your banner. So let’s do something to separate it from the rest of the resume. Let’s make it look like a banner, in fact.
Again, if you’re proficient with word processing and page design, then do what looks good to you. But I recommend at least using a horizontal line after your header to separate it from the rest of your resume. The following chart will help you do at least the most basic horizontal lines.
You might think something like a horizontal line is an unimportant detail. But your resume needs to be eye catching, and it needs to at least communicate information in a logical, efficient way. So doing things to help organize the information on your resume into easy-to-read, easy-to-understand sections can be quite important.