What a Harvard-style resume looks like
The format is deliberately plain. Harvard College's career-services guide shows a sample with the same four blocks, in this order: Education, Experience, Leadership and Activities, then Skills and Interests. The layout choices that make it recognisable:
- One column. Everything runs top to bottom, so it reads the same on screen, on paper and in hiring software.
- Your name centred at the top, with your contact line under it.
- Serif type and thin ruled headings to separate the sections: no colour blocks, no icons, no skill bars.
- Reverse chronological order inside each section, most recent first. The guide also says to avoid starting every line with a date.
- No photo. The guide lists including a picture among the things not to do.
- Bullets that open with an action verb, one result per line.
If you want Harvard's own file, it is on Harvard College's career-services page (Word and Google Docs, made for its students). We are not affiliated with Harvard University: “Harvard-style” describes the layout, which the career office's templates and many schools' resume guides share, and the version below is our own design.
The sections, one by one
What goes in each block, following Harvard College's guide:
- Education: school and degree, plus the extras the guide lists: GPA, thesis, relevant coursework and study abroad. High school is optional.
- Experience: job title, organisation, location and dates, then bullets on what you did and achieved.
- Leadership and Activities: built like Experience, for clubs, teams and projects where your role and contribution matter.
- Skills and Interests: technical skills, languages, lab techniques and personal interests, each on its own line.
Wording the bullets is the part that takes time: see resume summary examples and the skills to put on a resume. For a first resume, start with the first-job guide.
Build one here
The closest design in our gallery is Ivy, described in the product as the Harvard-style classic: centred serif name, ruled headings, role in italics and dates set to the right. Fill it in or upload your current resume and we lay it out, then preview every change. If your education leads, the Varsity and Campus designs in the full gallery open with Education.
Building and previewing are free. Downloading the PDF or Word file is paid, so you see the finished resume before you decide.
Word and Google Docs
Harvard's own bullet-point template comes in Word, accessible Word and Google Docs versions for its students. Ours downloads as a Word file, which Google Docs opens and edits from your Drive: the steps are on the Google Docs resume templates page, and the Word file's structure is on the Word templates page.
Is a Harvard-style resume ATS-friendly?
Yes: a single column of real text with standard headings is what hiring software reads most reliably, and our one-column designs score 100 in the free ATS resume checker (how we test is on the methodology page). The plain look is the reason, not a limitation. See ATS-friendly templates for the full list.
Who it suits
Students, graduates and early-career applicants, and anyone applying to finance, consulting, law, research or education roles, where a conservative layout is expected. If you want colour, a photo or a side column, the full gallery has them, but they read less cleanly in online applications.
Sources
Checked on 5 October 2026.