A professional résumé writer says you need to use Microsoft’s new font on your résumé

After years of promises, Microsoft introduced a new default Word font family , Aptos, last summer. It replaced the 15-year-old Calibri.  



As Microsoft 365’s default font, it will likely be increasingly used for résumés. I believe that at some point soon, Calibri, which many people use for résumés, will start looking as dated as Times New Roman and Arial. Now job seekers need to consider alternatives. 



I was a retained search consultant for more than 25 years and have held C-level corporate executive positions. I have reviewed more than 100,000 résumés. These days, I write executive and board résumés. Over the course of this work, I have found that people hold strong opinions about résumé fonts.



Here’s what you need to know about Aptos and how you can decide which font to use on your résumé.



Calibri’s legacy



I’ve long favored 11-point Calibri for résumés because it is the most popular résumé font. One reason Calibri is so popular is that it’s a sans-serif font designed to render well on screens. And as Microsoft’s long-term default font, Calibri is familiar and comfortable to readers’ eyes. What’s more, Calibri lets applicants write a two-page, 700-word résumé with plenty of white space.



However, many people loathe Calibri. One reason for this is that it’s not considered a beautiful, or aesthetic, font. 



Because of this aesthetic weakness, many believe Aptos could be a better alternative. I decided to test the new font on some of my clients’ résumés. Here’s what I found:



Aptos Regular



I love how 11-point Aptos Regular, also a sans-serif font, looks on the résumé page. It’s beautiful, easy to read on my laptop, and renders well on my phone. 



But it’s a little wide, which makes it hard to fit 700 words, an optimal word count for most résumés, on two pages . However, Aptos Regular can be perfect when I have a résumé that is light on content. It also works well for early-career résumés, which are often shorter than 700 words. To me, the smaller 10.5-point Aptos Regular font still outperforms the 11-point Calibri font. While a tad wide, it is gorgeous, easier to read than 11-point Calibri, and renders well on my phone. Plus, I can work around the occasional space problems it causes. 



Aptos Narrow 



The Aptos font family also includes a narrow version. I experimented with it for my clients’ résumés. It comes in handy when two-page résumés veer toward 800 words. While I usually don’t like to burden readers with that much text, sometimes using a few extra words to tell a high-impact story makes sense. 



Nicely, 11-point Aptos Narrow lets me fit an 800-word résumé onto two pages and retain adequate white space. It is a little harder to read than the fonts mentioned above because of weaker black-and-white contrast and a slightly squeezed feeling. Even so, it’s in my tool kit for the tough cases.



The résumé font rivalry reignited



After years of frustration with Calibri’s homeliness, I’m thrilled that Microsoft has made these wonderful new fonts available.



So, what will happen next? After years of font-roversy, the job search community finally accepted Calibri’s utility. While I still notice advocates for Times New Roman and Arial, the heat over résumé fonts has cooled.



Aptos seems to be taking off slowly, likely because of a soft launch by Microsoft. It seems like many job search community members have yet to experiment with it and voice their opinions. 



I’m looking forward to Aptos getting broader exposure. Ultimately, I believe Aptos is the best new font family for résumés I’ve seen in the last 15 years. I expect we’ll all benefit from the insights and conversations that will come as people start trying it. 







Donna Svei writes executive and board résumés. She’s a frequent writer and speaker on résumé and LinkedIn topics. Previously, she was a retained search consultant for 25-plus years and a C-level corporate executive.