A good template is a set of decisions already made for you: margins, hierarchy, spacing, and a layout that a parser can read. The moment you start “making it yours” with new fonts, colours, and boxes, you can undo all of it. Customizing well means changing the few things that make it feel like you while leaving the structural choices that make it work untouched.
Change these safely
Personality on a CV comes from content and small, controlled touches, not from a redesign. You can adjust plenty without breaking anything that matters.
- One accent colour: pick a single restrained colour for headings; leave body text black for contrast and printing.
- A readable font swap: change to another clean, standard font at the same size range; keep body text at 10 to 12 point.
- Section order: move your strongest section higher, for example projects above experience early in your career.
- Content and tone: this is where “yours” actually lives, in the wording of your summary and bullets.
Leave these alone
Some changes look like personalization but quietly wreck readability or ATS parsing. Multi-column layouts and text boxes confuse many applicant tracking systems, which read top to bottom and can scramble or drop text trapped in sidebars. Decorative fonts, tight margins under two centimetres, and photos add risk without adding signal. Icons in place of section headings are worst of all: a parser sees a blank where “Experience” should be.
Keep it consistent
Whatever you change, apply it everywhere. If one heading is coral and bold, all headings are coral and bold. If dates are right-aligned in one role, they are right-aligned in every role. Inconsistency reads as careless, and carelessness is the one impression a CV can never afford.
After customizing, confirm the layout still parses by running it through the ATS checker, and read the how to read your ATS score guide to interpret the result. Browse minimalist templates if you want a safe base, and use the resume builder to apply changes consistently across the whole document.