Pick a clean, professional template with a reverse-chronological layout. That layout highlights recent cabinet building roles and makes your skills easy to find.
Keep length to one page if you have under 10 years of cabinet building experience. Use two pages only if you led many projects or ran a shop for years.
Use ATS-friendly fonts like Calibri, Arial, Georgia, or Garamond. Set body text to 10–12pt and headers to 14–16pt so hiring managers read without squinting.
Give each section breathing room. Use consistent margins, 1.0–1.15 line spacing, and clear gaps between sections so your layout stays readable.
Use clear headings such as Contact, Summary, Skills, Experience, Projects, and Education. List jobs in reverse order and add 2–5 bullet accomplishments per role that show measurements and tools you used.
Avoid heavy graphics, multi-column layouts, or embedded tables that ATS and recruiters can’t parse. Keep color minimal and use standard section titles so systems and people find what they need.
Common mistakes include long dense paragraphs, inconsistent spacing, and mixing many fonts. Also avoid tiny margins that cram content, and don’t use images of certificates or logos instead of text.
Make sure your file saves as a .docx or PDF after checking how it looks in Word. Scan it once with an ATS-friendly checker if you can, and tweak headings or lists that fail parsing.