Resume Guide

Overview

This guide is the standard for every resume draft in this course. It draws on the GCC Career Services Resume and Cover Letter Guide, which was written for GCC students, and adds the writing and typography standards a design employer expects. Employers read a designer’s resume as a design sample, so the writing and the layout are both evaluated. Read the whole guide before your first draft, then use the checklist at the end before every submission.

The header

This is how the header looks on the copy you send to employers:

• City and state only. Leave off your street address and ZIP code.
• Write your phone number with hyphens, area code first, as in ###-###-####. Do not add +1.
• Use a personal email address built from your name. Your student email closes after you graduate.
• Spell out your portfolio URL (Google Sites or Behance) and drop https:// and www. A printed resume cannot be clicked, so link text such as “View my portfolio” leaves the reader with nothing.
• Use one divider style between items, all bullets or all vertical bars, never a mix.
• Your name may be larger and bold, and the header may be centered. Nothing else on the page is centered.

Education entries

• List the most recent first. Your college always goes above high school.
• Lead with the degree, then the school, city and state. Write “Expected” or “Anticipated” before a future graduation date.
• Keep high school listed until you finish your college degree; remove it after you graduate.
• Each school is its own entry, with no bullets and no vertical bars.
• Write “Maricopa Community Colleges” (plural) only if you attended more than one college.
• List a GPA only if it is 3.0 or higher.

Job and project entries

Every entry follows the same order: title first, then the company or client, city and state, and dates set flush right. Only the title stands out in bold. Every entry has at least two bullets.

• Write projects like jobs: project title or role, client (real or fictitious), dates, then bullets on what you did, the software you used, your process and the result. Class names do not matter.
• Use month and year for every date, with no slashes: “May 2025 to January 2026.” Use “Present,” not “Current.”
• Long jobs keep only the four or five bullets that matter most for the job you want.

Action verbs

• Design and production: animated, branded, composed, designed, drafted, edited, illustrated, modeled, photographed, produced, rendered, retouched, sketched, storyboarded, typeset
• Planning and process: analyzed, brainstormed, compared, critiqued, evaluated, organized, planned, researched, revised, scheduled, tested
• Communication: authored, collaborated, explained, pitched, presented, promoted, published, wrote
• Leadership and initiative: coordinated, created, developed, established, improved, launched, led, mentored, trained, updated

For a longer list grouped by skill, see the Purdue OWL list in the references below.

Typography and layout

• Use one clean, readable typeface family throughout, such as Arial, Helvetica or Calibri. Avoid typewriter, script and narrow display faces.
• Keep body text one size. Section headings may be slightly larger. Your name may be largest, but no more than about four points larger than the body text.
• Set section headings and job and project titles in bold. Do not underline anything for emphasis, and do not put a colon after a heading.
• Use real bullet characters, never hyphens or asterisks, all at one indent.
• Set bullets with a hanging indent: every wrapped line aligns with the text of the first line, never back under the bullet.
• Align text flush left, ragged right. Set dates and locations flush right on a right tab stop so every date ends at the same place. Do not space them over by hand.
• Never fully justify text. Justified type stretches the spaces between words and opens rivers of white space down the page.
• Rule lines are optional. If you use them, they must run exactly from the left margin to the right margin.
• Use bold and italic the same way everywhere. A single italic line is an inconsistency.
• Avoid extra blank lines and large gaps, and check that your PDF has no blank second page.
• Write states as the correct two-letter abbreviation (AZ) or spell them out, the same way everywhere.
• Save a PDF named with your name and the word Resume for employers. Save your cover letter as its own file.

Typography vocabulary

Flush left, ragged right

Lines align on the left edge and the right edge is left uneven. The default for resumes.

Flush right

Lines align on the right edge. Used for dates and locations.

Justified

Lines forced to align on both edges by stretching word spacing. Avoid it on resumes.

Rivers

White channels that run down a justified block when the word spacing stretches.

Centered

Lines centered on the page. Use it only for the name and contact header.

Right tab stop

A tab that aligns text on its right edge, so every date ends at the same place.

Hanging indent

The first line starts at the bullet and every following line aligns with the first line’s text, so the bullet hangs in the margin.

Hanging punctuation

Quotation marks, bullets and similar marks set just outside the text edge so the letters themselves align.

Rule

A horizontal line used as a divider.

Typeface and font

The typeface is the design (Helvetica); a font is one weight or style of it (Helvetica Bold).

Hierarchy

Using size, weight and spacing so the most important information is seen first: your name, then section headings, then titles.

References

• GCC Career Services: Resume and Cover Letter Guide (PDF), the full reference, including sample resumes and cover letters. Where the PDF and this guide differ, follow this guide.
• Purdue OWL: Action Verbs to Describe Skills, Jobs, and Accomplishments
• UC Santa Barbara Career Services: Polish the Writing