There are many ways to showcase your artistic personality and assert yourself as a designer. You start with your works, continue with your creative portfolio — but what you need to pass it to the employer is a well-made CV or resume.
However, once you are convinced that you need a resume template to present your skills, background, and portfolio to the employer, you risk getting stumbled on multiple questions and doubts. Like what type of resume you should better stick to or what you’d better start with if you have no prior experience. Besides, there are so many options to choose from: there are basic resume templates with universal design and creative resume templates — however, is it okay to use them? And finally, is it critical to use templates designed for particular positions and niches: like IT, design, or anything else?
Don’t worry, I’m here with all the answers, tips, and, of course, a huge bunch of the best resume templates you could ever think of.
Our Team’s Top Pick
Resume
elements.envato.com
The Basics: Types of Resumes
Before you start preparing your resume or exploring the provided resume templates, you should decide on the type of resume that works for you. There are three common resume formats: chronological, functional, and combination. Depending on your work experience, goals, and skills, you should easily find the one that works for you and showcases you as the most favorable candidate.
Chronological Resume
A chronological resume lists your work history, starting with your current or most recent job. This is the most apparent type of resume, and it’s usually easy to write it — especially if you have reach working experience you’d like to emphasize. For a candidate, it’s a convenient way to show your professional and career growth. And for the employer, it’s also a chance to assess the loyalty and responsibility as they see the person’s work history dates.
However, if you consider chronological resume templates for no-work-experience cases, or if you have considerable gaps in your career history or changed job too often, you should better functional or combination types. Besides, this isn’t the best format to call attention to your skills unless they are listed in the most recent position.
Functional Resume
A functional resume focuses on your skills and strengths necessary for the target position and employer. It de-emphasizes working experience, dates, and names — so it will fit students, freelancers with spotty work history. In return, it allows a convenient format of telling the candidate’s specific strengths and skills that can gel lost in a classic chronological resume. Volunteering, various courses, projects are the things that you can place in highlight and feel confident even if your career history lacks outstanding achievements, promotions, and job titles.
In fact, the omitted work experience can sometimes go sideways, as such a resume may look incomplete — as if the candidate is hiding something. The conclusion is obvious: you can use functional resume templates (or combination resumes, which you’ll discover further) if you are a post-graduate, have limited work experience, or changing your career. And avoid them if you want to emphasize growth or development gained at recent jobs.
Combination Resume
As you can see from the title, a combination resume mixes the features of the functional and chronological types and allows the user to freely blend their elements. As a rule, it makes a great focus on the skills while work history goes at the second place. That’s why even students with no working experience can use such resume examples for application — as long as they have other experience: from volunteering to freelancing and jobs unrelated to the prospective position.
A combination resume template is an option of choice to show off the skills acquired or developed throughout your work history instead of the specific positions you have held. This will particularly fit those candidates who seek to change a career, so their former places of work may not be relevant to the employer. However, if you have no experience at all, you better use a functional resume, where this part can be omitted entirely.
How to Choose Resume Templates
Now we’ve finally approached the major question of all candidates who are convinced to use resume templates instead of making it themselves but feel lost in the variety of types and designs. And I totally understand your confusion as there are thousands of downloadable resume templates with various designs, and it’s impossible to say which will work for you and which won’t. However, there is nothing to worry about, as there’s some basic knowledge to help you make your mind.
- What is the company/employer/position?
- Does the company have a strong or unique culture?
- What do you want to tell about yourself?
- What does your prospective employer what to see in the candidate?
- What do I want the template to tell about you?
Once you’ve got all the answers, you’ll find it a lot easier to cut off the resume templates that don’t work for you: too creative or, on the contrary, too minimalist and basic. Also, it will help you tailor the file to create an effective CV to show off your personality as it is.
Another detail you should keep in mind is that some companies use ATS — an Applicant Tracking System. It parses resume content before an employer, or HR specialist ever reads it, and what may be critical for you is that resumes with too much fancy formatting often get scrambled going through the ATS and never make it to recruiters. So apparently, if you use a chart to illustrate your skills, there is a chance the software won’t recognize it, and you should better use classical text-based resume templates.
Alternatively, you may be applying for a creative position requiring you to bring a maximum of your personality and be bold and inventive. In this case, you are more than welcome to add a bit of color, maybe some graphics or charts, and even have a custom design for your resume template. You must be pretty excited — however, there’s still time for balance as a kitschy-looking resume may result in a fatality (and maybe not!).
- Don’t use creative resume templates if they don’t match the company you’re applying to or the position.
- Don’t use sample resume templates containing graphics and charts if you know the ATS will parse it.
- Use create resume templates if it’s applicable but always mind the balance.
Types of Resume Templates
Once you’ve made a brief analysis of how you should choose resume templates and adapt them to the prospective position and company, you should also know what kinds of templates can fit you. As you have noticed, there are lots of professional resume templates of all sorts — however, it should be a lot easier to make a choice when you know 6 major types:
Basic resume templates
They have classic chronological formatting and are the most straightforward solution for business purposes, or when the resume will be first parsed by the ATM.
Colorful resume templates
They sound creative and daring, but in reality, such resume examples can be quite formal. Their main feature is that along with the basic structure, they can implement colorful elements for highlighting and emphasizing particular details.
Minimalist resume templates
These are pretty close to the basic ones. However, they allow different kinds of the resume: chronological, functional or combination.
Creative resume templates
They can have out-of-the-box structure and formatting, color accents, and everything that rather works for creative specialists seeking to assert themselves than any other specialists.
Resume templates for experienced candidates
They have plenty of room to list working history, skills, education, courses, and portfolio. As a rule, such templates include 2 or more pages and a separate template for portfolio/appendix.
Resume templates for postgraduates and students
Opposed to the previous type, such templates are usually functional, with skill and education placed in the limelight.
Resume
elements.envato.com
The Resume
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CV Resume
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Create a Resume Yourself
Who am I to hold you back from expressing your creativity? While using resume templates is the easiest way to assert yourself to your future employer, a custom resume is a valid option for everyone with some design experience or simply willing to try themselves in it. In fact, there can be many reasons why you want to do without resume templates, and I won’t be able to list them all.
Instead, I’ll be happy to share a complete guide on how you can professionally create your own resume. In our guide you will learn how to:
- Plan in you resume;
- Make sure your resume is made correctly;
- Write a convincing objective and present your experience;
- Present a portfolio;
- Talk about skills and experience;
- Assert yourself with confidence without turning your CV into an essay.
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