Printing your resume – Page 2

Yes, if it has dark text, good contrast and few shaded areas. Photocopiers and scanners struggle with light grey text, pale colours and background shading, which can turn into blotches or disappear.

To prepare a printed copy that survives copying:

• Print with dark black text at Normal or High quality.
• Avoid printing on coloured or textured paper.
• Avoid designs with grey boxes behind text.

If you know your printed resume will be scanned, a simple single-column design in black and white is the safest choice.

Yes. Use the same paper size, paper type, colour mode and quality, so the documents look like a matching set.

Tips:

• Put the cover letter on top when handing over printed documents.
• Do not staple the cover letter to the resume unless asked; a paper clip is easier to separate.
• Check both use the same font and header style before printing.

If your resume builder creates both documents, download both as PDFs and print them in one session.

Choose black and white or greyscale printing, and avoid "Draft" mode, which makes text look faded. Most of the ink savings come from removing colour, not reducing quality.

Other tips:

• Choose a design without large coloured areas or shaded boxes.
• Print double-sided for two-page resumes.
• Print only what you need for a job fair or interviews, and update the file before printing more.

A clean black-and-white resume looks professional and costs little to print.

The printer probably received the file in a form it could not interpret, often because the wrong printer driver is selected or the print job was corrupted.

Try:

• Cancel all jobs in the print queue.
• Restart the printer and computer.
• Print the PDF from a different app, such as a browser instead of a PDF reader.
• Make sure the correct printer model is selected, not a generic driver.

If other documents print fine but your resume does not, recreate the PDF from your source and try again.

Yes. One test copy catches problems such as cut-off margins, faint text, page breaks or the wrong version, before you waste paper and ink.

Check on the test copy:

• Your name, phone number and email are correct and clearly printed.
• Nothing is cut off at the edges.
• Page two has your name on it, if you have two pages.
• Colours or grey areas print clearly.

Only then print the full batch. Keep a few copies in a folder so they stay flat and clean.

Yes, if the PDF already shows the text correctly on screen. A PDF stores the shaped letters and their direction, so printing reproduces what you see.

Check before printing many copies:

• Open the PDF and confirm Arabic reads right to left and Hindi or Malayalam letters look correctly joined.
• Print one test page at Normal or High quality, since thin strokes in some scripts can fade at Draft quality.

ResumeBuilder.ae PDFs support Arabic (laid out right to left), Hindi (Devanagari) and Malayalam, alongside English, French, Spanish and German.