Length: one page or two?
A single page is the standard for candidates with fewer than eight to ten years of experience. It forces you to prioritise, which is a feature, not a limitation.
Two pages is normal for senior individual contributors and managers who need room for scope, outcomes, and a couple of selected high-impact projects. If you are genuinely unsure, one page is almost never penalised.
Academic CVs are the exception. They can run several pages because publications, teaching, grants, and conference talks are expected content, not filler.
Margins
Aim for margins between 0.5 and 1 inch (12–25 mm). Anything below half an inch looks cramped in print and often causes content to be cut off by printers. Anything above one inch wastes space that could hold real accomplishments.
In Advoke CV, margins are managed inside the template itself, so every layout uses values that are already printer-safe. You can adjust the overall text size and spacing in the Design panel without ever breaking those limits.
Fonts
Two font families are safe choices across every modern system: a good sans (Inter, Segoe UI, Helvetica) for headings and body, or a good serif (Georgia, Cambria) for body text with sans headings.
Rule of thumb: use at most two families and at most three sizes. A 10.5–11.5 pt body size with a 22–26 pt name treatment is a reliable starting point.
Spacing
Consistent spacing is what makes a resume look professional. Section headings should have slightly more space above them than below. Entries within a section should have equal spacing between them.
Line-height between 1.4 and 1.55 is comfortable for body text. Bullets benefit from the same line-height as paragraphs — not tighter, which is a common mistake that makes dense resumes unreadable.
Section order
Put your strongest evidence closest to the top. For most experienced candidates that means Summary, then Experience, then Education, then Skills. For students and recent graduates, Education may come before Experience. For academic CVs, Publications often come before Experience.
File format
A text-based PDF is the safest default. It preserves layout on every machine, keeps text selectable, and parses cleanly in modern applicant tracking systems.
Some postings explicitly request DOCX. If so, follow the instruction. Otherwise, PDF is fine.
Things to avoid
- Photos, unless the market you are applying into expects one.
- Multiple columns of body text, when the resume will be parsed.
- Icons in place of contact labels — write the actual email and phone number.
- Skill rating bars. They are decorative and add no information a recruiter can use.
- Unusual section names. "Synergies" is not a section. "Skills" is.
- Coloured body text. Headings can carry an accent colour; body copy should not.
Every Advoke CV template ships with formatting values that are already inside these ranges. You can adjust text size and spacing in the editor’s Design panel, and the print pipeline will still keep the layout inside printer-safe bounds.