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For many years I have recommended that people use a font other than the Microsoft default Times New Roman to create a resume.  Most people are reading resumes on line these days and you would be hard pressed to find a website that uses Times New Roman as their default website font.  It just doesn’t look that good on the screen.  The little additions to the tops and bottoms of letters on Times are called serifs.  Evidently serifs are useful when reading significant amounts of text.  They supposedly help keep our eyes from tiring if we are going to be reading a lot.  But when it comes to a resume, I have always encouraged people to use a sans serif font – one without those letter additions.  Microsoft has helped make that persuasion easier, I hope.  Word 2007 debuted with Calibri, not Times New Roman as the default font, and that is also the case for Outlook.    While I like Calibri a lot (okay, I’m kind of a font geek) Ariel is also a nice resume font. It’s narrow so you can fit more words on the page without crowding.  Verdana and Tahoma are also attractive resume fonts.  If you aren’t sure what to use, try out a variety and see what looks attractive to you on screen, and also in print form.  When it comes to having an interview your resume will appear in hard copy form and you want to make sure it looks good to you in that format as well.  While your resume won’t get you a job – it can be a key element in getting to the interview phase and you want it to look polished and professional.  So I consider Times New Roman retired.

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