Harvard resume template, free to fill and download

"Harvard resume" is the informal name for the format taught by the Mignone Center for Career Success at Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences in its guide Create a Strong Resume. The guide asks you to list headings such as Experience in order of importance, and within each heading to list information in reverse chronological order, most recent first. The look that grew around it is simple: serif type, a centred header, bold job titles, dates aligned to the right and thin lines under each section heading.

Recruiters like it because it is predictable. They know where to find your current role, your degree and your skills, and nothing on the page competes with the content. Applicant tracking software likes it for the same reason: one column, real text and standard headings.

The Harvard FAS guide includes a short list of do's and don'ts. These are the ones that matter most when you fill in the template:

• Do not include a picture, your age or your gender. The guide lists all three under "Don't". Resume mode in our editor has no photo field for that reason.
• Do not use personal pronouns such as I or We. Start bullets with a verb: "Built", "Led", "Reduced".
• Do not list references on the page, and do not start each line with a date. The template puts dates on the right so the first words a reader sees are your job title and results.
• Be specific, active and fact-based. The guide asks for language that is "specific rather than general", "active rather than passive" and that quantifies and qualifies. Its top mistake is "not demonstrating results".
• Check the PDF. The guide warns that your formatting must translate properly when converted to a PDF. Ours is generated directly as a PDF with embedded fonts, so what you see in the preview is what the employer opens.

A typical order for a student or early career resume is Education, Experience, Leadership and Activities, then Skills and Interests. Once you have a few years of work, move Experience above Education. In the editor you can move any section up or down, rename it, or add custom sections such as Research, Publications or Volunteering.

Each entry has a heading line (organisation or job title), a second line with the location, the dates on the right, and three to five bullets. Two lines per bullet is plenty. If the page runs over, the preview shows the second page immediately, so you can trim before you export.

The same design works as a Harvard style CV. Switch the editor to CV mode and it changes to A4 paper and allows longer documents, which suits academic applications and jobs outside North America. Many people search for a "cv template harvard" when they mean exactly this: the serif layout on A4. You can also browse the CV templates page for A4 previews of every design.

The Harvard guide recommends that your resume and cover letter use the same font type and size. Our cover letter generator gives you a letter in three tones; keep the fonts consistent with your resume, and keep the letter to a single page, as the same guide advises. The premium designs listed above each come with a matching letter layout.

Use the "Load it with an example" button to see the template filled with a fictional data analyst. Replace the details one section at a time, and keep the shape: a short headline, two or three roles, each with measurable results. For more filled examples by job, see the resume examples. Before you send it, run the built-in ATS check and read our ATS-friendly resume guide.