Editor, Publisher

Jobseekers that have just graduated from highschool or from college with little to no work experience under their belts usually have what I call "pint-size" resumes, which means that there's little to almost nothing on the page.  Jobseekers owning these types of resumes are usually apprehensive about sending resumes to companies for fear they'll be immediately rejected by stern hiring directors expecting to see resumes with long strings of bullets followed by countless examples of a job applicant's work experiences.  While I can't help jobseekers in miraculously creating professional experiences that they never took part in, I can at least help jobseekers in making it seem like there's more on their resumes than what's actually there and these small maneuvers fall under the simple heading of what I call creative word processing tricks.

Trick #1:   Alter Font Sizes

One of the first word processing tricks I'll discuss is font adjusting.  This is a really simple technique. 

For example, if you typed your resume using a size 10 or 11 font and you need to stretch information on your page more so, then you should consider increasing the font size to either 12 or 13.  The different font sizes on your computer (Microsoft Word) can be accessed in one of two ways.  Either you can simply open the font-size panel that is usually stored in a tool bar at the top of your computer screen.  It should already be set at 12 pt. by default.  Just click on the down arrow next to the number that is currently displayed from the font-size box and click on a number.  That's it. 

Another way to access the different fonts is simply by clicking on Format from the main menu bar.  (I should quickly point out here that most of the techniques you'll be applying to help lengthen your resume can be accessed conveniently from the Format panel.)  Now, back to the instructions, next click on the word Font and a large drop-down box should appear with different fonts for you to choose from.  Go to the column or display box that reads "Size:"  Choose a font size from within this box.  Once you've selected it, click OK.

Altering your font sizes a tad will definitely help to stretch text both across the page as well as up and down.  Just make sure you don't increase the font size by too much like using a size 15 or 16 font.  You don't want your resume to appear as thought it belongs to a kindergarten graduate who's totally enthralled with jumbo-size letters.

Trick #2:   Add Objective Statement

While I personally don't like to use objective statements myself in a resume nor do I ever encourage experienced jobseekers to use them in their own, I will apprehensively suggest it here. 

If you're a first-time jobseeker desperately looking for a subtle way to help eat up unwanted white space at the top of your resume and you have very little job experiences to showcase on your resume, then you may want to consider introducing an objective statement to your resume.  If you're the wordy type in describing your career objective with a potential new employer, you could definitely devour an additional three, four or even five lines of white space at the top of your resume.  Plus, you'll consume an additional two lines of dividing space normally required before and after the objective paragraph itself.  While these separating lines won't have any text displayed on them, they'll still smoothly serve as clear transition lines from one body of information to the next.

Trick #3:   Choose Healthier Fonts

Next, on my short list of tricks is to consider using a font that consumes more space horizontally and vertically.  To show you just what I mean by this and to give you some clear ideas of possible fonts to work with, I listed font illustrations just below.  Each example depicts job duties for the same jobseeker, but in each new instance where the example is given you'll notice that the job description is typed using a different font.  At the top of each example I noted the type of font that was used, the size of the font (which always remained consistent for illustration purposes) and the amount of horizontal lines that each example required for this web page.  Also, please note that both the left and right margins for the following illustrations were kept consistent throughout this demonstration.

(Times New Roman, Font Size 10,  9 lines of text)

I worked 5 years in the retail industry.  My duties regularly included opening the store first thing in the morning and closing the store in the evenings, updating window displays, ordering merchandise, monitoring budget for casual clothes, training new employees, alerting supervisor to potential problems with employees, issuing store refunds, organizing store meetings, keeping track of employees’ vacation time and missed days and I took care of other duties not mentioned here.

(Arial, Font Size 10, 10 lines of text)

I worked 5 years in the retail industry.  My duties regularly included opening the store first thing in the morning and closing the store in the evenings, updating window displays, ordering merchandise, monitoring budget for casual clothes, training new employees, alerting supervisor to potential problems with employees, issuing store refunds, organizing store meetings, keeping track of employees’ vacation time and missed days and I took care of other duties not mentioned here.

(Verdana, Font Size 10, 11 lines of text)

I worked 5 years in the retail industry.  My duties regularly included opening the store first thing in the morning and closing the store in the evenings, updating window displays, ordering merchandise, monitoring budget for casual clothes, training new employees, alerting supervisor to potential problems with employees, issuing store refunds, organizing store meetings, keeping track of employees’ vacation time and missed days and I took care of other duties not mentioned here.

(Courier New, Font Size 10, 13 lines of text)

I worked 5 years in the retail industry.  My duties regularly included opening the store first thing in the morning and closing the store in the evenings, updating window displays, ordering merchandise, monitoring budget for casual clothes, training new employees, alerting supervisor to potential problems with employees, issuing store refunds, organizing store meetings, keeping track of employees’ vacation time and missed days and I took care of other duties not mentioned here.

(Lucida Sans Typewriter, Font Size 10, 13 lines of text)

I worked 5 years in the retail industry.  My duties regularly included opening the store first thing in the morning and closing the store in the evenings, updating window displays, ordering merchandise, monitoring budget for casual clothes, training new employees, alerting supervisor to potential problems with employees, issuing store refunds, organizing store meetings, keeping track of employees’ vacation time and missed days and I took care of other duties not mentioned here.

What We Discovered Using Healthier Fonts

As you can clearly see, fonts Courier New and Lucida Sans Typewriter consumed more space on the page.  They both took up more space horizontally, which subsequently forced the following text to stretch further vertically on the page.  In this example, we uncovered that both fonts consumed 13 lines of space and the other fonts in this example used 9, 10 and 11, respectively, of horizontal lines spacing.  I'm sure if you open your own font panel in Microsoft Word or whatever word processing software you're normally accustomed to using, you'll be able to find other fonts that do just as good of a job in conveniently eating up white space and helping to smoothly extend the text on a resume.

Also, if you're new to using Microsoft Word and you don't know how to access your font panel, then go to the top of your computer's screen.  At the top, you should see a tool bar with the word Times New Roman contained in a long rectangular-shaped box.  By default, your computer's font is normally set at Times New Roman.  Once you locate Times New Roman from this upper tool bar, you'll locate a down arrow right next to the box that the words are stored in.  Click on this down arrow and immediately a drop-down box should appear with different types of fonts for you to choose from.  Once you find a font that you like, simply click on it and start typing.  That's it.

Trick #4:   Adjust Margins

Now, I'll move onto my next word processing trick and that is margin fudging.  To get your text to extend further down the page (vertically), then you could also consider adjusting your left and right margins slightly.  For example, if both your left and right margins are currently set at .50 then you may want to adjust them to possibly 1.0, 1.25 or even 1.50.  This will give you more white space at both the far left and far right columns, which coincidentally will place your text more so at the center of the page.  To give you an example of how this might look, I used the same example from above using both tight margins and wide margins.

TIGHT MARGINS

(Lines Yielded:  8)

Also, if you'll refer back to the earlier font demonstrations, specifically the example highlighting (Verdana, font size 10, 11 lines of text) you'll notice that there's a mild difference in the number of lines of text displaying in this example and that of the second example just below.  The earlier Verdana font example (without bullets) produced 11 lines of text and the example below (with bullets) produced 15 lines of text.  Now, I'm sure you can see right away, just from comparing these two examples, that bullets definitely help in moving things further down a page.