The day I found out my resume was killing my chances for 8 years

I was laid off from a warehouse job in Tulsa back in March and figured I'd just polish my resume like always. Sent out 40 applications over two weeks and got zero callbacks, not even for entry level stuff. My buddy who works at a staffing firm finally looked at it and pointed out I was listing job duties instead of results, and my font was Comic Sans... He said it looked like a high school project from 2005. Fixed it with a simple template and numbers like "cut inventory errors by 15%" and got 3 interviews in the next week. Has anyone else found out years later they were sabotaging themselves with a bad format?

3 comments

3 Comments

kelly.charlie1mo ago

Comic Sans for a resume is insane, that's on you.

patricia_gonzalez1mo ago

Last time I saw someone use a fun font on a serious document, the hiring manager actually laughed during the interview. @kelly.charlie gets it, some choices just scream "I didn't think this through." It's rough out there, but you really can't blame the system for calling that one.

fiona_west211mo ago

My cousin sent out 47 job applications last year with Papyrus font on her cover letter. She got exactly ZERO callbacks until a friend told her to switch to Arial. The crazy part is she's an accountant, not a graphic designer, so people saw the font and assumed she was unprofessional before reading a single word. The system sucks in a lot of ways but fonts are basically the outfit your words wear to the interview, and showing up in a clown costume isn't the system's fault.