Modern resume templates

What actually reads as modern

Modern is mostly typeface and spacing, not ornament. A sans-serif face, generous line height, clear separation between sections, and a restrained accent colour will read as current in any industry. A resume that looks dated is usually a serif face set tight with underlined headings — not a resume that lacks a skills chart.

This is worth saying because the templates marketed hardest as modern tend to be the ones carrying infographic elements: proficiency meters, timelines, circular skill ratings. Those are the parts that parse worst and communicate least. A five-dot meter next to "Python" tells a reader nothing they can act on, where one bullet describing what you built with it tells them everything.

Modern without the parsing risk

Several templates here use a sidebar, which is the one layout choice with real consequences for applicant tracking systems — the text can extract across both columns rather than down each in turn. That does not make them unusable. It makes them worth checking: export the PDF, copy the text out, and confirm it reads in a sensible order.

If the role is likely to be screened heavily by software, the ATS-friendly collection is the same aesthetic with the sidebar removed.

Common questions

Are modern resume templates ATS-friendly?

The typography is irrelevant to a parser — sans-serif and serif extract identically. What matters is column count and whether the text is real. The single-column templates in this collection are as safe as anything on the site; the two-column ones are worth running the copy-paste check on.

Should I use a modern template for a corporate job?

A clean sans-serif layout is safe almost everywhere now, including finance and law. What still reads as out of place in conservative industries is colour used heavily, a photo where the local convention is not to include one, and anything resembling an infographic.

Can I change the font on a modern template?

Yes. Each template ships with a typeface it was designed around, but font family stays a control under Customize, along with size, line height, margins and accent colour. The live preview and the exported PDF follow them together.

Other collections