Stick to basic fonts, colors when designing resume

Putting a resume together isn't easy. What should you put in and leave out? What goal are you trying to achieve with it? And then there's the question of what the design should look like. Part of that design comes with the font you choose.

Some people go overboard with their font choices. Trying to stick out will usually hurt you more than it will help you.

"What really will pop out is your job experience," says Vicki Salemi, author of "Big Career in the Big City" (Jist, $13).

When designing your resume, you want to make sure it looks clean and crisp. Being flashy won't get you very far. Salemi says over-emphasizing words by using bold fonts and italics can take away from how professional a resume looks.

Use a classic font, like Times New Roman or Arial, and be consistent with it throughout. Leave the Comic Sans for the kids and let your professionalism speak for itself.

A major thing to avoid is colored fonts. Make sure you steer clear of vibrant colors, like purple or red, and use classic black as much as possible. Salemi says if you're looking for a way to use some kind of color, using gray sparingly is acceptable.

Using bullet points to highlight what's most important is a good way to grab your reader's attention.

"Make it easy for your recruiter to see your skills," Salemi says. "Don't clutter them with too many details."

When building your resume, if you fall in between one and two pages, you may want to resize your font. This way you're not leaving any empty space. But make sure you don't go too large, or too little, when choosing a font size. Never go smaller than a 10 or bigger than a 12.

More and more, job seekers are turning to the Internet to post resumes and portfolios.

"Sans serif is a good choice if you are delivering your resume online," says Diane Gottsman, owner of The Protocol School of Texas. "It's easier to read, and the font appears clearer on the computer screen."

Sans serif fonts are those that rely on straight lines without any embellishments in their presentation. If the "l" looks like anything other than a simple straight line -- for example, if it has a "flag" at the top or a "foot" at the bottom -- the font is not a sans serif. Arial is a common sans serif font.

Gottsman also suggests leaving an inch margin when designing an online or paper resume so it can be printed without getting cut off.