Creating resume in Sketch

There aren’t many good resume templates out there. I guess this is the reason why so many people ask designer friends to “just design a nice CV template for me”.

Yes, I guess a nice resume is half the battle. So I spent a couple of hours to create one, and I’m going to share the template at the end of this article.

I had some assumtions about what makes a resume good:

• There should be a way to communicate with the hiring person: a way to interact with the reader
• The resume should get to the point on the first page, and actually state why the candidate in question is a good choice
• It should not be long, too detailed or complicated
• It should be perfect for printing
• It should be sharable via email, so not bigger in size than 25 MB

So let’s start.

I’m an early adopter of Sketch, and I really love working with it. So my natural choice was this software. I picked Sketch’s very own Paper size A4 (595x842px) artboard and layout grid.

So first of all, I wanted to create a resume template that is really mediating between the writer and the reader.

I created a section in the top of the template, where the hiring person can leave some notes.

This would be just a nice gesture to welcome any comments, and help the hiring person’s work. The idea, by the way, is coming from Medium’s own print.css solution:

We added a generous margin at the top of first page only, to leave room for possible handwritten annotations.

Then I added the main section that contains the name of the candidate, a profile picture, basic info, and contacts.

In the next section I highlighted the profession, and immediately after that there is a “Why Hire?” section.

Instead of showing lenghty — by the book — descriptions of work experience, skills, projects, I just added a brief summary of arguments that emphasize the candidate’s best skills and experience.

In the right column: a short timeline of job experience.

And basically this is it. If the hiring person needs more details, s/he can follow the link at the bottom of the document.

But wait: Sketch files are not print-ready…

The thing is that Sketch is for digital projects. And our document is not print-ready yet. Why? I’d recommend you to read Peter Nowell’s article on Sketch for Print Design.

In this post he highlights 3 very important disadvantages of Sketch:

1. It is really hard to convert all your texts to outlines
2. Sketch is by default RGB, instead of CMYK
3. Probably your pictures in your .sketch are too in RGB, instead of CMYK

The easiest way to optimize your Sketch file for print is if you follow these steps:

• Export a PDF version (size: 1x)
• Open it in Illustrator
• Select all (⌘A)
• Convert to outlines (Type > Create Outlines)
• Change color mode to CMYK (File > Document Color Mode)

One other thing: it is best if you find the optimal CMYK colors for your document. Use print-friendly blacks for example.

So are we ready now? Unfortunately not.

There’s a good chance that your now print-ready PDF is bigger than 50MB. The best you can do is to go to Adobe Acrobat, and select Tools > Optimize PDF > Reduce File Size. Or even go to Advanced Optimization and clean up your pdf manually, making it as small as possible and preserving the optimal quality of your document.

If you are below 25MB, that’s a huge win. If the file size exceeds 25MB, maybe the best way to share your resume is to create a Dropbox Folder, sharing it publicly and sending out only the link to that folder.

Conclusion

If you are better at using Illustrator than Sketch, you should definitely choose AI. If — as myself — you are already better at using Sketch, it’s worth a try.

Resumes are for printing. This is the most important thing to keep in mind.

// Download: resume-template.sketch //

Part 2: How to design a good (and simple) CV template – based on what recruiters and HR persons say