Some career coaches offer original templates on their websites, too (you can find Muse career coach Jena Viviano’s templates here, for example).
If you’d like a Word template but not necessarily one that comes directly from Microsoft’s library, you can turn to Jobscan, Hloom, and other sources for free templates or pay for one on sites like Etsy. You can find free Word resume templates right in the program-in recent versions by clicking on “File” > “New From Template” and scrolling through or searching for “resume.” You can also search for resume templates offered by Microsoft Office online here. 7 Microsoft Word Templates to Use as Starting Points.
How to Use a Template to Make a Resume in Word.How to Choose the Right Word Resume Template.Here’s everything you need to know about finding, picking, and using Microsoft Word resume templates-plus a few examples of templates you can use for free (or cheap!). pdf and other formats-it can be to your advantage to work in Word. docx is the format that’s compatible with systems across the board-and some systems still can’t properly parse. According to Amanda Augustine, a career expert and resume writer for TopResume, files that end in “.docx” are the safest to submit to an applicant tracking system (ATS), the software that companies use to organize and analyze applications and identify the most promising candidates for a given role (often before a human is ever involved). Starting with Microsoft Word is a smart move. The bad news is that then, very quickly, your first problem (the blank document) becomes an entirely new problem: How in the world do you choose the right template? And since starting with a template eliminates a lot of formatting and spacing decisions, you can focus on the content of your resume so that you can get your foot in the door and get hired. There are plenty of resume templates out there that you can use. The good news is that you don’t have to start from scratch when you’re writing a resume. And when it comes to your resume-the document that stands between you and your next job-the stakes can feel particularly high. You’re probably familiar with the terror of staring at a blank document and seeing that blinking cursor just waiting for you to start writing, whether you’re thinking of long gone school assignments or that report you had to submit to your boss yesterday.