Modern Resume Templates and Examples for 2024
Modern Resume Templates
A resume is an important document that summarizes your qualifications, work experience, and education to potential employers. Creating a well-crafted, modern resume can help you stand out from other candidates and land your dream job.
As the unemployment rate stays below 4%, it’s important to be aware of competition within the job market. To keep up with the latest trends, use a modern resume template to make your application stand out. Modern resume templates follow best practices to ensure your resume makes it past ATS and impresses recruiters.
Here’s a closer look at why you should use a modern resume template and a few examples and tips for creating the perfect resume.
What makes a modern resume template?
Using an outdated resume template can diminish your chances of landing a job interview. These templates often feature complex layouts, distracting design choices, and extraneous sections, making it difficult for recruiters to find what they’re looking for quickly.
Modern resume templates are simple, clean, and straightforward. These qualities increase your chances of moving on to the next step of the hiring process, as recruiters and hiring managers can more easily identify your strengths, skills, and experience. Below, we’ll explore the main themes of a modern resume.
Top 10 parts of a modern resume template
- Subtle pops of color and minimalist design
- Simple but interesting font choices to highlight details
- Eye-catching name and contact information
- Highly organized sections for a well-structured layout
- Plenty of white space to avoid clutter
- QR code that links to an online portfolio
- Creative typography that makes sections stand out
- Room for infographics or skill charts
- Sleek and trendy yet professional
- Prioritizes elements such as bullet points and line breaks
When to pick a modern resume template
A modern and well-created resume can catch the attention of potential employers and interest them in your application without including unnecessary information or design details. You can use a pre-designed template and customize it to fit your needs and those of the employer. This can help you focus on the content of your resume rather than the design.
Top five reasons to choose a modern resume layout
- Ensure your document is reader-friendly
- Optimize for ATS
- Make a professional first impression
- Work with a simple, visually appealing design
- Streamline your professional work history
How to get the most out of this template
When crafting your resume, it’s important to follow modern resume-writing best practices to increase your chances of making it past ATS and impress potential employers.
By keeping the following best practices in mind, you can maximize your resume for individual job descriptions and set yourself apart from other candidates:
- Utilize modern design elements: What’s great about modern resume templates are all of the unique features available. Interesting colors and fonts will help catch the eye of hiring managers. Use things like infographics, QR codes, and icons intentionally and tastefully.
- Leverage a simple style: A key quality of a modern resume is its simplicity. Stick to one page and avoid cluttering your document with too much content or irrelevant details. The goal of a modern resume template is a clean, concise, well-organized design.
- Customize your content: Depending on your industry and occupation, competition could be high, so customizing your resume is key to standing out. Match your skills with the job ad’s requirements and use them as keywords within your modern resume.
- Consider industry expectations: Oftentimes, fields like law and finance appreciate a more formal resume with limited colors. In contrast, when applying for jobs in marketing or graphic design, it can pay off to opt for a more creative modern template.
More Resume Templates
Looking for a different resume template? Check out this list:
Frequently Asked Questions: Modern Resume Templates
The best format for a modern resume template will depend on your career, experience level, and industry. However, a combination format is a solid choice for most occupations and works well in this template style. Merging the strengths of the functional and chronological resume formats, a combination resume provides the best of both layouts.
You can start with a skills list at the top of your resume or have it follow a reverse-chronological overview of your employment history. The main idea of this format is to provide space for a comprehensive overview of your most relevant technical abilities and soft skills.
Most resumes shouldn’t exceed one page, and this same best practice applies to modern resumes. Unless you’re applying for a government job, leadership role, or academic position, one page is generally sufficient. Any more than that, and there’s no guarantee hiring managers will even take a look at page two.
As we mentioned above, modern resumes are known for their simplicity. The idea is to create a concise document that has just enough information, no more, no less. If you’d like to include more details about projects or publications, you can accomplish that with a cover letter.
All the essential structural elements should be included in a modern resume template. The only difference is how they’re organized within the document. With a modern spin on the classic resume, designers have used their creativity to piece together resumes in new and interesting ways. In fact, some modern designs may include additional sections for awards, affiliations, and projects.
At the very least, ensure your modern resume template includes the following sections:
- Contact information
- Profile
- Key skills
- Professional experience
- Education and certifications
Most modern resume templates have space at the top of the document for a profile, sometimes called a professional summary. This is similar to an objective but serves a different purpose. Instead of describing your career goals, you provide a simple summary of who you are as a professional.
While you could use an objective statement on a modern resume template, it’s important to note that it’s generally best utilized for entry-level professionals. If you plan to use an objective, tell the hiring manager more than what you hope to gain from employment by describing what you have to offer them.
ResumeTemplates offers free, HR approved resume templates to help you create a professional resume in minutes. Choose from several template options and even pre-populate a resume from your profile.