Best Resume Font: Make Your Resume Easy to Read and Professional

In the world of hiring, your font is your resume’s first handshake. Recruiters and Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) demand absolute clarity and professionalism. A poor choice—too stylish, too small, or too complex—can filter out your resume before it ever reaches a human eye.

Choosing the right font ensures your skills are noticed immediately — and that every word counts.

In this guide, we’ll show you the top resume fonts recruiters trust — and how to pick the one that makes your application stand out for the right reasons.

Why the Right Font Matters for Your Resume

Choosing the perfect font for your resume is more than just a design preference — it shapes the first impression you make. Recruiters often scan dozens of resumes in minutes, so clarity, professionalism, and readability are essential to help your key achievements stand out.

It’s also crucial for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). Many employers use software to filter resumes before a human even sees them, and non-standard or overly stylized fonts can cause parsing errors that lead to an automatic rejection.

Font choice even communicates aspects of your personality — sometimes without you realizing it. A playful or outdated font can make you appear less professional or less detail-oriented, which may hurt your chances despite strong qualifications. 

Typography research from 2023 also shows that readers instinctively form judgments about competence and reliability based solely on the style of text — meaning the font you choose can influence how trustworthy and capable you appear.

Selecting the right font ensures your skills get noticed instantly — and judged for what they truly are.

What Makes a Font “Best” for Resumes?

A great resume font does three things:

• Improves scanability — recruiters must find key details in seconds.

• Stays consistent everywhere — no layout issues on different screens or systems.

• Optimal Spacing: Does it have balanced leading (space between lines) and tracking (space between letters) to prevent a cramped or too-sparse look?

• Matches the professional tone of your target industry.

If a font helps your resume look clear, organized, and confident — it’s doing its job.

💡 With SuperCandidate, your resume is automatically optimized with professional fonts, spacing, and formatting tailored to your industry — so you don’t have to think about design rules at all.

Top Resume Fonts to Choose in 2025

Calibri

A modern, clean sans-serif font designed for screen reading. Widely used in professional settings, it’s a safe and versatile choice for almost any industry.

Arial

Simple, neutral, and highly readable—Arial is well-suited to digital resumes and has been a standard for years.

Helvetica

A favorite in creative industries, Helvetica is modern and sleek, making information easy to digest.

Times New Roman

A classic and highly trusted serif font. It’s especially appropriate for conservative fields such as law, government, and academia, where a more traditional and formal tone is expected.

Georgia

A classic serif font that remains highly readable on both screens and printed documents. Slightly wider and more open than Times New Roman, it offers a touch of warmth while keeping a polished, formal look.

Serif vs Sans-Serif: Which Should You Choose?

Sans-serif fonts (like Arial, Calibri, Helvetica) have clean lines and look modern and straightforward — ideal for most industries and digital resumes.

Serif fonts (like Times New Roman or Georgia) include small decorative strokes that feel more traditional and formal — a good choice for law, education, and academia.

There’s no universal winner:
➡ Choose sans-serif for a modern look
➡ Choose serif for a more classic tone

Just stay consistent — never mix multiple styles in the same resume.

Fonts to Avoid on Your Resume

Avoid fonts that look childish, overly playful, or informal. Anything that feels like handwriting, comic lettering, or a novelty design can instantly undermine your professionalism. Fonts like Comic Sans, Papyrus, or overly decorative script styles may seem unique, but they distract from your qualifications and make your resume harder to take seriously.

A simple rule: if a font looks like it belongs on a birthday invitation or a poster, not a business document — it has no place on your resume.

What Font Size Should You Use?

• Optimal size: 10 to 12 points for the main text.

• Headings: 13-16 points, bolded for clear section separation.

  
  

Conclusion

Your resume font has a real impact on how quickly — and how positively — recruiters judge your application. Choosing a clean, modern, and widely supported font ensures your resume is aligned with the professional image you want to project. 

When your formatting is effortless to read, your achievements become effortless to appreciate — and that’s what gets interviews. Once your font is set, make sure your writing style is consistent too — including using the correct verb tense for a resume.

💡 With SuperCandidate, you can instantly generate or adapt a resume with professional fonts and spacing — perfectly structured for both recruiters and ATS.