The overall appearance and layout of your job application documents make an important impact on the reader. After you are happy with the actual content of your documents it is well worth your while then to think about their overall visual appeal. Documents which are easy to read because they are visually appealing because they are well designed and set out are much more likely to be well received by the reader. Why, because your information is easy to read and absorb.

Here are a few guidelines:

• Try to maintain a good margin size for top, bottom and side margins to give your document an open look – e.g. 2.54cm.
• Choose a font that is easy to read – some of the more eye friendly ones include arial, verdana and century gothic. Use the same font throughout your document though.
• Choose a font size that is easy to read – size 11 is usually about right.
• Use slight larger fonts for headings and sub headings, ‘bold them make them stand out. This helps to draw the eye to the information, and breaks up the page.
• Consider using an across page underline to break up each of the parts of your resume. And/or……use white space so that new headings stand out.
• Consider using a top and bottom of page border – evaluate if this adds to the visual appeal of the document.
• Create a header which contains your name, and a footer showing page numbers.
• Ensure that you check your document to remove any spelling or grammatical errors.
• If you are not confident in your word processing skills ask a friend for assistance with layout.

One final note of caution – don’t overdo or overuse layout features that might be available to you. Use too many gimmicks and your resume will have a jumbled, tossed together look, rather than a carefully designed, easy to read document.