Best Font for a Resume: Size, Pairs and What to Avoid

Explore the Finance resumes hub and the finance careers guide.

The best font for a resume is one plain, standard font you already have, set at 10 to 12 points, with margins between half an inch and one inch. Calibri, Aptos, Arial, Garamond, Cambria and Georgia all work.

Nobody gets hired for a font. A bad one can cost you the read.

This page is the formatting piece of our finance resume guide, which has a full example to copy.

What is the best font for a resume?

Calibri is a safe default. It's clean on a screen, installed almost everywhere, and reads well at 11 points. If you'd rather have a serif, Garamond or Cambria do the same job. The name matters less than three things: it's standard, it reads at a normal size, and you use it the same way all the way down.

UC Berkeley's career office says to choose a simple format with a 10-11 point font size and margins of half an inch to one inch all around.

Calibri was the Office default for years, and newer Microsoft 365 installs default to Aptos.

What does a reader need from a resume font?

A reader needs to find your titles, dates and numbers in a few seconds without working for them. That means a font with clear letters at a normal size, headings that stand out from the body, and nothing decorative in the way. The software reading it first needs a standard font it can turn back into text.

A busy manager reads a resume the way they read a report. They scan for the headline and the numbers, then decide whether to read the rest.

Across my roles, the common thread was taking complex financial and operational information and turning it into something a business leader could understand.

A resume is that job in miniature, with you as the numbers.

The font's only job is to stay out of the way.

On the software side, Berkeley's advice for applicant tracking systems is to use standard formatting: standard fonts (e.g., Times New Roman), section titles. That's your reason to stay plain even if you like a font. A system that can't read a letter can't match the word it's in, and whether keywords and ATS filters matter covers what happens to that word next.

Which fonts are safe for a resume?

A font installed with Windows, macOS or Office is the safe choice, because it usually prints and converts the way you set it. Export the PDF and check, because that's the only proof. Four sans serif picks and four serif picks cover almost everyone. Choose by how dense your page is: sans for a busy page of numbers, a sturdy serif for a page with longer bullets.

If you can't decide, use Calibri at 11 and move on.

Spend the time you save on the bullets, starting with the skills a finance posting actually names.

What font size should a resume be?

Set the body at 10 to 12 points, 11 for most fonts. Headings go one or two points bigger, and your name bigger again, somewhere around 16 to 20. Contact details and dates can sit at the body size. Anything under 10 points is too small to read on a phone or a printout.

If your page only fits at 9 points, the page is too long. Cut a line instead, and smaller fonts and thin margins covers why the squeeze backfires.

Should a resume use serif or sans serif?

Either works, as long as you're consistent. A common split is sans serif for headings and serif for the bullets, because plain headings are easy to spot and a serif body is easy to read in longer lines. For a dense finance page of short, number-heavy bullets, one clean sans serif all the way down is simpler.

Purdue's writing lab puts it this way: sans-serif fonts are typically used for headings and titles, allowing the reader to quickly locate information, while serif fonts are used for descriptions.

How many fonts can a resume use?

Two at most, and one is usually better. Use the second font only for headings, and keep sizes, bold and spacing the same for every heading and every bullet. A mix of fonts looks like a resume stitched together from old versions, and the reader notices before they read a word.

My first finance resume came off the cookie cutter template we were all handed at university: black and white, Times New Roman at 12, one column, no color, a one-line profile. My current one keeps the single column, sets the body in a clean sans serif, puts my name and section headings in a serif, and adds one dark green accent. That's two fonts and one color, and nothing else. Why the one-line profile had to go is on the summary page.

Purdue says generally, you should use no more than two fonts in your résumé, and that the key to using fonts in your résumé is to be consistent.

Watch what you paste. A bullet you copy from an old file often brings its own font along, usually one size off, and that's the mismatch readers spot.

Which fonts should you avoid on a resume?

Avoid script and handwriting fonts, decorative and novelty fonts, condensed fonts that squeeze letters together, and anything you had to download. They're harder to read at a glance, some won't show on the reader's computer, and some come out of the software as the wrong letters.

What font works best for numbers on a finance resume?

Pick a font where your digits are easy to tell apart and line up down a page. On a finance resume the numbers carry the proof, so the 1, the capital I and the lowercase l should look different, and the 0 and the O shouldn't blur. Test your pick at 11 points before you commit.

A finance reader goes to your numbers first. Percent change, dollar size, days to close.

If a 1 looks like an l, the result they came for gets a second look for the wrong reason.

Type "Il1 O0 $1.2M 14%" in your font at body size and read it back. If any pair blurs, change the font.

Presenting numbers to people outside finance is the interview version of the same problem.

Should your cover letter use the same font?

Yes. Use the same font and size on your cover letter as on your resume, and the same header with your name and contact details. Your two documents travel together, often in one PDF, and a match makes them look like one careful person made both. A mismatch looks like two templates from two websites.

Harvard's career office says to ensure your resume and cover letter are prepared with the same font type and size.

How do you check your resume font in 60 seconds?

Run four quick tests before you send. Print it, or view it at actual size, and read it at arm's length. Open it on your phone. Export the PDF and open the file itself. Then copy all the text into a plain text editor and see if it comes back in order, with every letter right. That test doesn't prove every application system will read it, but it catches text that comes out scrambled or out of order.

Every step between the reader and your number is a step where they can stop. I made the same point in a case interview about getting customers onto e-statements: make the ask very clear and very quick, 1, 2, max 3 clicks.

The rest of that case is in the incentive that only looked cheap.

PDF or Word? Send a PDF when you get the choice, since it keeps your font the same on every screen, and send Word when the posting asks for it.

Resume font checklist

Before it goes out, check that the whole resume uses one or two standard fonts, the body sits at 10 to 12 points, the margins are half an inch to one inch, and the cover letter matches. If all four hold, stop fiddling with the font and go back to the bullets.

Save the exact file you sent with its row in your job application tracker, so you know which version they opened.

Pick the font once. Spend the evening on the bullets.