Fonts for résumés and CVs
Readable open-license serif and sans-serif families for a one- or two-page CV, with the weights and italics a document needs.
Experience
A CV is a dense document that someone scans in well under a minute, and it is often read as a PDF on a screen before it is ever printed. The typeface should be invisible in the good sense: nothing about it should slow the reader or draw comment.
Start with economy. Body text on a CV usually runs at 10 to 11 points, so letters need to be clear at that size without being wide; a face that sets compactly can save you a line or two per section, which decides whether everything fits on the page. Next, check the styles. You need a regular, a bold for job titles, and an italic for dates or employers, and the bold should be clearly darker than the regular. Figures matter more here than in most text, because dates, phone numbers and percentages are everywhere. If you send an editable file rather than a PDF, the recipient may not have your font; families built to match the metrics of common office fonts keep the layout intact when substituted. One family is enough; two is the limit.
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Lato
Five weights from Thin to Black with italics: enough contrast for a name, headings and body.
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Open Sans
Open forms and upright stress stay clear in small contact details and dense bullet lists.
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Arimo
Character widths match a widely installed system sans, so an editable file does not reflow on another computer; four weights with italics.
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PT Sans
Regular and Bold with italics, Latin and Cyrillic: a compact set that covers a one-page CV.
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PT Serif
A transitional text serif drawn to match PT Sans, for a serif body under sans headings.
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Lora
Moderate contrast and firm, flat serifs, optimized for screens and usable in print; four weights with italics.
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Libre Baskerville
Tuned for 16px screen reading with a taller x-height, so it holds up in PDFs read on screen.
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Karla
An even stroke and loose spacing keep small text airy; seven weights from ExtraLight to ExtraBold with italics separate body from headings.
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Source Sans 3
Eight weights with italics allow a clear hierarchy without a second family.
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Tinos
Width-compatible with a widely installed office serif, so an editable file keeps its line breaks; Regular and Bold with italics.
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EB Garamond
A revival of Claude Garamont's sixteenth-century types in five weights with italics, for a traditional, bookish page.
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Crimson Text
A book serif in the old-style tradition whose default figures are lining, which suits dates and phone numbers; three weights with italics.
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Cabin
Near-monoline humanist letters with a width axis that narrows a line when a section has to fit the page; four weights with italics.
Samples load a basic Latin subset of each family. Every family here carries an open license; its page states the terms and offers the original files.
Questions about fonts for résumés and CVs
Serif or sans-serif for a CV?
Either works. A sans tends to look current and reads well on screens; a serif suits academic, legal and editorial fields. What matters more is size, spacing and a consistent hierarchy.
Will applicant tracking software read these fonts?
Such systems read the text layer of a PDF or document, not the letter shapes, so any standard text font is fine. Export a real text PDF, not an image, and avoid decorative faces for anything that must be parsed.
Do I have to embed the font in the PDF?
Embed it. Open licenses allow embedding in documents, and an embedded font guarantees the recipient sees the layout you made.
What size should CV text be?
Between 10 and 11.5 points for body text is common, with your name noticeably larger. Faces with a large x-height can go to the smaller end of that range.