Does anyone else in the recruitment world find that names printed in BLOCK CAPITALS and BOLD feel aggressive and seem harder to read?
Do you react differently to a candidate who puts their name in CAPITALS?
More importantly, do you change it to make it look more attractive before sending the CV out?
I don’t know if any research has been done on the effect of using only capitals in CVs, but in the 1950s, tests were conducted on the signs for Britain’s first motorways. Graphic designers Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert created a sans-serif typeface they called Transport.
It seems that when looking at a word quickly, such as driving on a motorway or scanning a candidate’s CV, there is a much higher level of recognition when the word starts with a capital and the rest is in lowercase.
For me, at least, Tony Line reads better than TONY LINE, so I agree with the graphic designers.
If you are a candidate applying for a job, use the correct style.
If you are a recruiter, try changing the presentation of a candidate’s name and see if there is more interest.
I would love to hear from graphic designers about why this effect occurs.
