What is the best font to use for my CV?
A good choice of font for your CV will ensure that it looks professional, and recruiters can read it with ease.
The wrong choice of font could make your CV look sloppy, and give readers a headache.
Your industry could affect the choice you make too. For example, if you are in banking or law then you may opt for a very traditional font – whereas a trendy tech or media CV might require something a little more exciting.
Here are our top 27 fonts that we recommend using on your CV, along with who they might work for, and examples of how they look on a CV.
Blinker
This low-contrast font is a great choice for highlighting design elements like bolder titles. It uses clear curves for a crisp and easy-to-read finish. All of which contributes to the clarity of your CV, so you can effectively highlight your skills and experience.
Best for: Great for most industries but particularly, teaching, administrative and academic CVs
Source Sans
Source Sans Pro was created for user interface (UI) design, which means a huge amount of attention was paid to the look and style. This font has a classic feel, is professional and easy on the eye, so recruiters will love it.
Best for: Business, management, trade and finance
Bodoni MT
Bodoni MT is an Italian typeface that offers a trendy and timeless style. Over the years, this has been used by lots of luxury brands like Vogue, Calvin Klein and Gucci, making this ideal for creative industries.
Best for: Marketing, IT, design, fashion and retail
EB Garamond
A take on the classical Garamond, the organic strokes and design of this font make it elegant and easy to read. This can be perfect if you want to add character and a touch of class to your CV, without going too far or affecting the reading experience for the recruiter.
Best for: Healthcare, pharmaceuticals, administration and personal assistants
Fira Sans
Fira Sans is a professional but contemporary style that is readable without being too formal. It is ideal for creating headers that stand out. Plus, the neat finish is perfect for industries that focus on precision and quality.
Best for: Construction, mechanics and engineering CVs
Inter
This font can do a huge amount of work for very little effort. Offering great readability and spacing, you can easily format your text for a clear and concise application, that still has creative flare. Not only that, but this font lends itself nicely to bold titles. This focus on layout is great for those in creative industries.
Best for: Graphic design, marketing and other creative industries
Courier Prime
This is a traditional-looking font that is less formal than the original Courier typeface from the 50s. It’s ideal for creating an edgier, slightly more daring CV whilst also ensuring readability and professionalism.
Best for: Finance, consultants, business, managerial and professional CVs
Montserrat
Montserrat is a versatile font used in a lot of editorial work, websites, branding and signage. This is a result of the geometric shapes and readability and this can be a welcome addition to any CV, but particularly those that want to remain professional, whilst also adding a modern style.
Best for: Admin, business support, editors and journalists
Playfair Display
If you’re looking for a font that’s sturdy but elegant and great for writing slightly larger bodies of text, you can’t go wrong with Playfair Display.
Best for: Design, marketing, estate agents and sales
Roboto
If you write for a living, you’ll be aware it’s not just the words that count. So, for a simple but stylish font that offers a great experience for the reader, Roboto is the font for you. It’s also the reason this style is better suited to roles that require a lot of writing.
Best for: Content writing, communication and digital marketing roles
Saira
Saira is a contemporary and versatile sans-serif font. While looking different to traditional fonts like Times New Roman, this can still be used for a professional, sophisticated CV with a formal tone.
Best for: Teaching, accounting, finance and business
Source Code Pro
Source Code Pro comes from a family of typefaces created specifically for coding environments. This means it is not only great for coding roles, but also IT positions and others that handle large amounts of data and/or information.
Best for: Coding, IT and data analysis
Arial
Arial is probably the most popular choice for CVs and it’s easy to understand why. It’s a simple no-frills font, which is easy to read and keeps your document looking clear and crisp. If you’re having trouble deciding on a font for your CV, Arial is definitely a safe bet.
Best for: All industries and career levels
Calibri
Calibri is a nice light font, which is still clear and firm enough to provide a pleasant reading experience. It’s ideal for a CV(curriculum vitae) which needs a lot of technical detail, like IT or engineering, because it will allow you to get more text on the page without it looking bunched up.
Best for: IT and technical CVs
Tahoma
Tahoma creates a bit more of a cool trendy impression on your CV without going overboard. It’s strong and rigid lines make it extremely easy to read, with just the right amount of curvature to create a fresher impression than some of the more classic fonts – ideal if you’re applying to quirky firms, and want to work in an office with table tennis and hammocks 🙂
Best for: Digital marketers and tech firms
Times New Roman
Times New Roman was the CV font of choice many years ago, mainly because it used to be Microsoft Word’s default font. It creates quite a formal traditional look for the CV due to the classic looking serifs (flicks at the end of words). Some recruiters find Times New Roman a little hard to read, so make sure you have the font sized at 12 or more to combat this.
Best for:Teaching CVs,academic CVs, orTraditional organisations such as architects,interior designers, banks and law firms, estate agents.
Lucida Sans
Lucida Sans creates very clear and crisp text, so you certainly won’t have any complaints from people not being able to read your CV. It certainly has a more modern feel to it, so best used for junior roles or roles in the creative space.
Best for: Junior, graduate,creative CVs, Hairdresser CVs
Cambria
Cambria is often described as a slightly less formal version of Times New Roman – it’s still traditional, but has a touch of modernism. If you’re looking to go for something slightly more daring without going too far from the beaten path, then Cambria could be the font for you.
Best for: Project managers, finance managers, management consultants,business analysts,professional CVs
Garamond
If you’re looking to create a classy elegant CV, then Garamond is certainly the font to go with. It provides a touch of class without ruining the reading experience for recruiters and hiring managers. A good choice for professionals who want to give their CV some character.
Best for: Doctors, Accountants, accounts assistants
Browallia
Despite it’s exotic sounding name, Browallia is actually one of the simplest and most down-to-earth fonts out there. If you’re looking to create an incredibly easy reading experience and aren’t too worried about jazzing the CV up stylistically, then opt for Browallia.
Best for: Data analysts, surveyors, electricians,warehouse operatives
Abadi
If you want to create a CV or resume with a very modern feel, then Abadi provides a very sleek and stylish appearance that will resonate well in trendy industries like media and fashion. It’s not just style over content though – it also makes the text nice and easy to read and digest.
Best for: Media and fashion, chef CVs
Georgia
Georgia gives your CV a look that is halfway between trendy and classic, and is very popular in the writing and editorial space.
Best for: Writers, bloggers, editors
Trebuchet
Trebuchet us a good impactful font which ensures that your writing jumps off the page and captures the readers attention instantly. If you’re looking to stand out amongst the competition with a lesser used font and hook recruiters to your CV, then trebuchet could be a good differentiator for you.
Best for: Customers service CVs, waitress/waiter CVs, bartender CV,sales assistants CVs, Receptionist CVs, Cleaner CVs, Care assistant CVs, Support worker CVs, Personal assistant CVs
Verdana
The Verdana font has a very solid dependable feel to it, whilst still remaining stylish and simple. It has a very heavy bold option which is great for creating impactful headlines.
Best for: Construction and engineering CVs
Berlin Sans FB
Berlin Sans is probably as cool-looking as you can go, without going too far. It will give your CV a bit of an edgy look, but won’t make it unreadable. Only use to apply for really modern forward thinking firms like Facebook and Google – don’t use it for traditional organisations.
Best for: Applying to Facebook and Google
Century Gothic
For a font that’s crisp, clean and easy-to-read, you can’t go wrong with Century Gothic. This font can be used for a CV in any industry without looking out of place.
Best for: All industries
Gill Sans
If youneed to focus on readability, but also want to add a splash of modern CV style without going wild, opt for Gill Sans. Its a very simple font, with a tiny bit of new era styling added.
Best for: Admin and business support CVs
Best font size for your CV
Once you’ve selected a font that suits your personal style and industry, you need to think about the size of font you will use.
Depending on the type of font you use, you should ideally use a font size between 10-13.
Too big and your CV will look basic and unprofessional.
Too small and recruiters will struggle to read your CV.
And remember to keep your CV at around 2 pages in length, with a professional layout.
Font colour
To provide a pleasant reading experience for recruiters and employers, keep the colours and formatting simple when writing your CV.
Black text on a white page may seem boring, but it works.
If you want to experiment a bit – some blues or dark colours in your headings are about as far as you should go in order to stay professional.
Going overboard with too many zany colours will give readers a headache and have recruiters doubting your professionalism.
Headings and subheadings
Recruiters will want to scan through your CV quickly and pick out the information they need. Make this easy for them by enlarging and embolding your headings and subheading like below.
Keep your fonts consistent throughout the CV to ensure it looks uniformed and neat.
Use one of our Word CV templates to get a head start.
Fonts that are best not to use on your CV
Now that we’ve covered the best fonts for your CV, it’s worth mentioning the fonts which should never be used on a CV.
Hopefully it’s clear to see why from the examples…
Impact
Some candidates use Impact in an attempt to make an impact on readers – but it doesn’t make a positive one. It looks very harsh and kills the professionalism
Courier
Courier is a very old fashioned basic font, and may cause readers to doubt your IT skills.
Comic Sans
Comic Sans is the closest thing you will find to a rushed scribble – it shouldn’t be on a professional document.
Bradley Hand
Bradley Hand is both difficult to read and unprofessional looking – avoid at all costs
CV font matters
Although CV font may seem like a trivial matter, it can have a huge effect on your ability to land interviews and job offers.
Readability and professionalism are the most important factors when deciding the best font to use for your CV.
When in doubt – just keep it simple.
Good luck with the job search.
