The built-in template in your word processor. These ship with Microsoft Word, Google Docs and LibreOffice and give you a header block for contact details, pre-styled section headings, and bullet formatting that stays consistent as you type. Use one when you want a usable resume in an afternoon and you are applying to ordinary postings in your field. Before you commit, check three things: that the layout is a single column rather than a sidebar design, that there are no text boxes holding your contact details, and that the headings can be renamed to the standard ones employers and software expect — 'Work Experience,' 'Education' and 'Skills' (CareerOneStop (U.S. Department of Labor), undated). If the template fails any of those, open a different one rather than trying to repair it.
An ATS-focused template. These come from job sites and public career services, and they are deliberately dull: one column, black text on white, standard headings, no icons, no shading, no skill rating bars. Using an ATS template is one of the seven tips for building a resume that software can read, alongside choosing the right file type, keyword optimisation, avoiding graphics, charts and photos, picking an ATS-friendly font, labelling sections correctly, and skipping fancy formatting (Indeed, undated). Use one whenever you are applying through an employer's careers portal or a job board — which is most of the time now, since companies use ATS software to receive applications, sort them in the order received and track where each candidate sits in the process (CareerOneStop (U.S. Department of Labor), undated). The plainness is not a compromise. A simple format suits the moment when you want the interviewer looking at what you did rather than at the design, and it scans cleanly in most systems (Indeed, undated).
A design-app or marketplace template. These are the ones with a coloured sidebar, a headshot slot, icons next to your phone number and sometimes a chart rating your skills out of five. They look expensive and they photograph well. They are also the highest-risk option in a software pipeline: multi-column layouts, tables and text boxes can scramble the order of your information (Jobscan, undated), and graphics, charts and photos are specifically called out as things to avoid in an ATS resume (Indeed, undated). There is a narrow, genuine use for them — a printed leave-behind at a portfolio review, an attachment going straight to a hiring manager you have already spoken to, a design or marketing role where the artefact is part of the pitch. If you want one, keep a plain single-column version as your default and treat the designed version as the exception, not the master copy.
An online resume builder. A builder walks you through each section, prompts you for dates and bullet points, and produces a formatted file at the end. It helps most when you are staring at a blank page — a first resume, a return after years out, a change of field where you are not sure what belongs. Two cautions. First, download the finished file and open it yourself; some exports are PDFs that are really pictures of a resume, and a scanned or image-based PDF may contain nothing the software can read, which is why a text-based PDF is the one to send (Boardinfinity, undated). Test yours by trying to select and copy a line of text. Second, the prompts generate generic phrasing. Rewrite every bullet in your own numbers — units, caseloads, dollar volumes, headcount, tickets, square footage, whatever your work is measured in.
Starting from a blank document. DIY means setting your own margins, one heading style, one bullet style, and nothing else. It takes an hour or two the first time and then it is yours forever. Choose it when your history does not fit a grid: a long technical résumé with publications or certifications, a career with concurrent roles at the same employer, a trade background with licences and tickets that need their own section, or simply a two-page document you expect to edit every week. Blank documents also avoid the single most annoying template failure — the invisible table that holds your dates in place until you add one line too many and the whole page jumps. You get no protection from your own inconsistency, though, so set your styles once and apply them rather than formatting each line by hand.
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