Should I use a serif or sans serif font on my resume?

Either works. Sans serif fonts such as Arial, Calibri or Lato have clean, simple letter shapes and look modern, especially on screens. Serif fonts such as Georgia, Cambria or Garamond have small strokes at the ends of letters and feel traditional and formal.

How to decide:

• Technology, start-ups, marketing and most modern roles: sans serif suits the tone.
• Law, academia, publishing and some finance roles: a serif can look fitting.
• Not sure: a clean sans serif is the safest all-round option.

Both are equally readable for software, as long as the text is real text in a PDF. Some people combine a serif for headings with a sans serif for body text; if you do, stick to just those two fonts.