4 Tips To Create Your CV Template On Google Docs and FREE Template!
Recently, I am working on updating my CV, and I was surprised by how difficult it is to find a (free) template that I like and that would work on Google Docs!
During the 3 days, I browsed through many different site, and I was tricked so many times by “create your CV for free” sites. Nearly all the templates that are nice are not free (which in understandable), and, to be honest, most of them are only nice if you have exactly the same content length and/or graphical information.
I occasionally came across some templates that looks nice and are free, but most of them are only editable with Adobe products, which I don’t have. Even if I have a copy, I only have basic knowledge in indesign/AI and would probably create a mess.
Once in a life time (exaggerating), I did find template that looks promising AND is editable on Google Docs. I was over the moon when I found the first one.
However, when I started editing it, I found that the CV is made up of text boxes (which would be fine on MS Word) and the contents in the text boxes looks very blurry no matter how you try.
Also, when you move one text box, everything will move! It was very painful trying to figure out where those page breaks came from and even more painful trying to fix that.
Nearly all the templates that are nice are not free (which in understandable), and, to be honest, most of them are only nice if you have exactly the same content length and/or graphical information.
After 3 days of fruitless search and disappointment, I decided to take it to myself to create my own template. After I started that, I only regret NOT DOING THAT EARLIER!
I am not a designer by any means, but I’d hope to share what I did to make it work and the limitations that I discovered along the way.
# 1 Use Table!
While there are pros and cons about both single column and 2 column CVs , I am personally a big fan of 2-column design. (See this Quora thread for further discussion. Even though CV and Resume are different, I think the points there apply to both the same.)
While columns may sounds like a more obvious choice for creating document with columns, you should forget about it when it comes to CV or Resume — unless you love to keep going back and forth to adjust the every time you expand or delete content from one of your sections.
Apart from creating columns, table is also a good way for you to keep content of different style apart from each other, and make editing much easier.
# 2 Do NOT Use Insert Drawing Or Text Box
While text box is a lifesaver in creating layouts and template in MS Word, it is not the same in Google Docs.
To start, there is no such option in adding a text box. To create a text box, you will first need to insert a drawing, and then in the drawing canvas, you can add a text box.
While many free templates are still using this (as most of them are designed with MS Word in mind), and it is still the recommended ways by quite a few online, I would strongly discourage you to do the same:
- The resolution is LOW. If you don’t believe me, try it for yourself. I do not understand how can a word (not in a picture) be so pixelated… (if you know how to make that work, please share below :) )
- Difficult to adjust the size. If you can miraculously make the resolution decent, everything will be gone once you resize your text/the drawing.
- If you move one thing, you move everything (see above).
- You cannot create clickable links or area with drawings. Given that most of us are sending our CV with links to portfolio and social media out electronically, it would be natural for the receiver to expect the link to be clickable. However, you cannot add any link to your content in the drawing, which to me is a huge no go. (I looked online and couldn’t find a workaround, if you do, please share below!)
# 3 Manipulating the Grid Lines, Cell Colour and Font Thickness
While there is a huge limitation to adding graphic components to your document without messing up your verbal content, there are things that you can do to spice your CV up.
By changing the colour and appearance of the grid lines, you can give your define and delineate your content and to create an information hierarchy.
Apart from grid lines and cell colour, another thing that I liked to play with is the font thickness. Same as MS Word, the some fonts does come in different thickness. I used that to draw attention to certain content or to indicate the relative importance. When I select the fonts, I did take into account on how much I can do with the same fonts.
Not all fonts are created the same and not all of them come with different thickness.
#4 flaticons
While this is not tied only to creating CV on Google Suite, I’d love to share this awesome sites here. Given that most of our CVs are pretty wordy, it would be nice to use icons to replace some of the description.
Among various sites, flaticon is my favourite! It has thousands of free icons which you can download in various format (I usually go with png), and you can select the colour and dimension of your icons before you download!
The Unexplored
I do not really like including charts or diagrams in my CV (as I find it distracting, confusing, taking up many spaces but not conveying much), You can totally add charts and diagrams to your CV if that fits your industry’s norm.
The Cons
Having talked all about the things that you can do with Google Docs, there are also a lot of things that you can’t do (or hate to do with Google Docs):
- As mentioned above, it is difficult to add images. After adding images, it is difficult to keep it exactly aligned with your verbal content
- You can’t remove line before table. So it may create some weird white space before different section. I personally do not mind it as I think white space is important. But it could be a huge throw off for some.
- The unexpected blank page (which could be impossible to remove). Google that :) You will see that one of the solution is to file a support ticket :P.
FREE Template
Like I mentioned above, I am not a designer and I will not say that my template is perfect (disclaiming all liability ;)). However, given the pain I went through, I hope that this template would give you a good starting point. If you do happen to improve it, please let me know!
Before you go to my template, there are a few things that I want to let you know:
- I added company description because I tend to work in smaller companies/startups. If you are coming from renown entity, you can (or should) remove that.
- I didn’t add the expected salary or notice period section in it as most of the time, HR has some obscure policy to not share salary info. Adding that there will give them (and you) more trouble. However, if the job description specified that you should include those information, add them back! (You can duplicate the table for any section to keep the consistency.)
- This template is set to be long as it is a CV Template, not a Resume template (see the difference between CV vs Resume in this article). However, I do believe that it’d be easy to crave a Resume template from this.
- There are some sections that I did not include (e.g. social media section) as it is not really useful for my line of trade. Include (or remove section) it if it is (ir)relevant.
- I would strongly recommend you to add links to your projects or portfolios to demonstrate your skill or work!
If you (still) want to use / make reference from my template, go to this document >>create a copy and off you go!
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