Resume Format in India: What Reddit Says (2026)

A plain one-page resume in a single column: 16 replies said keep it to one page, 8 asked for a plain, easy-to-read layout, and Jake's Resume template on Overleaf was the most-named template.

The template most often suggested is Jake's Resume, a free one-column LaTeX template on Overleaf. In r/Btechtards, people around one student were pushing a two- or three-column resume with a photo; the reply said the student's plain version was the right one.

Another 5 replies said format matters less than people think: clear impact and the right keywords count for more than a template.

• the way u did is called jakes resume and its the correct way (r/Btechtards)
• Honestly, resume format matters way less than people think. (r/developersIndia)

For most people, yes: 16 replies said keep it to one page, and only 2 said two pages is fine, one of them only for senior developers.

One reply allowed a page and a half if you really cannot fit it on one. An interviewer's advice post in r/developersIndia said ideally one page and at most two, without shrinking the font to fit.

Short resumes get the opposite advice: 4 replies told posters to fill the empty space on their page rather than leave it blank. And not everyone agrees with Reddit: one 2026 graduate said their college's soft-skills instructor told the class to make a two-page resume.

• Man keep the resume 1 paged. 2 paged resumes would get rejected easily (r/developersIndia)

Mostly no: 6 replies said drop your 10th and 12th marks, and 1 said keep them for campus placements, where colleges ask for them.

The advice for off-campus applications is to list your degree and leave school marks out. For campus placements it is different: posters say their college gives them a fixed resume format, with education at the top and school marks included, and that they cannot change it.

• No need to put any info about 12th 10th etc. btech is fine. (r/developersIndia)
• For college placements the marks are important so makes sense (r/developersIndia)

Replies are split: 3 said leave out a low CGPA, and 1 warned that recruiters read a missing CGPA as a low one.

No reply set a cut-off everyone agreed on; one fresher's rule of thumb was to skip it unless it is above 9. In campus placements, posters say the college's format decides what goes in.

• Hiding your cgpa is red flag, recruiter assume it is low. (r/developersIndia)
• skip CGPA if it’s not above 9 (r/developersIndia)

Reddit is split: 7 replies said drop it, and 6 said keep a short one that says what role you want.

The most upvoted reply of this kind, with 30 points, told a final-year student to remove the summary and their 12th class percentage. Those who would keep it say two or three lines, without buzzwords, naming the role you are applying for.

• Remove summary,12th class percentage make projects section and exp section more detailed. (r/developersIndia)
• You don't need to remove the summary, just cut those buzzwords (r/developersIndia)

Below your experience and projects, said 7 replies, unless your college's placement format puts it first.

Freshers with internships are told to lead with skills, internships and projects. In one campus-placement thread the poster replied that education has to stay at the top in their college's format, and the reply was to follow that format on campus and move projects and experience up when applying off campus.

• pls put your education sections below projects and experiences (r/developersIndia)

Reddit's replies rarely discuss it: only 1 reply said leave the photo out, and none gave advice on date of birth, marital status or a declaration.

The questions show up in posts instead. One student said their college's official placement resume requires a photo; another said a soft-skills instructor told their class to add a declaration and a signature, and asked whether that was good advice. Posters applying to Deloitte's NLA hiring said its own format asks for a photo and one page.

An interviewer's advice post in r/developersIndia said to leave out personal details and hobbies, and a reply further down that thread told another poster to remove their photo unless asked for one.

• Don't write things like Mission, personal details, hobbies, spot awards etc. (r/developersIndia)
• Remove your photo. Don't need to show your face unless asked for. (r/developersIndia)

Overleaf's LaTeX templates for the layout (6 suggestions, Jake's Resume in 4), and ChatGPT for wording (5 for, 2 against).

ATS score checkers came up 3 times as a check, one of them Resume Worded by name. One reply suggested a simple resume in Google Docs, and one in r/Indian_Academia pointed to Harvard's resume guide as a standard.

The warnings about AI are about tone: replies said wording that sounds machine-written, full of fancy words, turns recruiters off.

• This looks like a ai written resume tbh. Too many fancy words (r/developersIndia)

PDF is fine, said the 2 replies that answered, and one added a test: paste your resume into a plain text file and check it still reads.

The poster had seen recruiters use and prefer DOCX. One reply said PDF or DOCX both work if the text survives being pasted into a text file; an interviewer's post said use PDF, because Word can distort the formatting depending on the version and the screen.

• legible if you copy and paste it into a text file (r/developersIndia)

We searched Reddit's public archive (through the Arctic Shift API) for posts from 1 January 2024 to 23 October 2026 with "resume format" in the title in r/developersIndia, r/Indian_Academia and r/Btechtards, and for posts that mention a resume together with freshers, Naukri, placements, CTC, a photo, a declaration, personal details or date of birth, plus r/resumes and r/EngineeringStudents posts about Indian resumes. The search in r/IndianWorkplace did not finish, and several in r/developersIndia, r/Btechtards, r/Indian_Academia and r/resumes finished only in part, because the archive kept timing out. We kept threads from job seekers in India who ask about format or ask for a resume review, and left out posts that promote a product and posts aimed at jobs abroad. In those threads, a keyword filter picked the top-level replies that mention format, layout, length, templates, education, marks, photos or personal details (111 of 305); we read each one and coded the advice it gives. 67 gave advice we could code; the rest asked questions or talked about content. A reply can count towards more than one point. We skipped removed and downvoted replies, bot notices, the poster's own replies, link-only replies, self-promotion, and unvoted replies added more than a week after the thread. We list only threads with at least one coded reply, plus four whose posts we cite. The counts are small, so treat them as rough.

We found no Reddit post in these subreddits that mentions Resumity, the company that publishes this page, and no mention in any reply in the threads we read. Resumity's seven templates are all single-column, the plain layout these threads recommend, and export to PDF and DOCX without a watermark. Its free check reads your PDF in your browser and shows the plain text software pulls out of it, the same paste-into-a-text-file test one reply suggests.