Resume Icons: When to Use Them and 5 Clean Examples

By Mustafa Tarabya, founder of CVBooster · Published 2026-10-07 · Updated 2026-10-07

7 min read

Icons for a resume or CV are fine in one place, the contact line, as long as the text beside each icon says the same thing on its own: the phone number, the email, the city and the link. The one constraint: an icon is a picture, and applicant tracking software, screen readers and some PDF exports skip pictures, so anything that only exists as an icon can disappear before a person reads it. The W3C accessibility tutorial says decorative images "don't add information to the content of a page," and that is the test for every icon on your resume. Below are the rules, then five complete examples with and without icons. Written by Mustafa Tarabya, who hired for his own company, read every application himself and now writes CVBooster's guides.

You found the perfect template. Little phone, little envelope, little pin for your city, five stars next to "Excel." Then the online form asked you to retype everything anyway, because the software read your phone number as a blank square. The icons were not the problem. The icons doing the job of words were.

Resume icons example: a contact line that survives screening

The safe pattern is icon plus full text, one line, in a normal font. If the icon vanishes, nothing is lost.

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Read the header with every icon covered by your thumb. If it still makes sense, the icons are decoration and they are safe.

Where icons help and where they hurt

Contact line: fine, with text. Phone, email, city and one link. These are the icons everyone recognises.

Section headings: optional. A small icon beside "Experience" or "Education" is decoration. Keep the heading text, because screening software looks for the word.

Skill ratings: skip. Stars, bars, dots and filled circles for skill levels are icons that pretend to be information. Nobody knows what three and a half stars in Excel means, and the software reading your file often cannot see them at all.

Icons instead of words: never. A phone icon with no number beside it, or a LinkedIn logo with no address, is a blank to anything that cannot see images.

The accessibility rule is the same one. Section508.gov explains how to write alternative text for images that carry meaning; on a resume the simplest version is to put the meaning in the text next to the icon, so the icon carries nothing on its own.

Readability first. The National Careers Service advises: "use a clear font like Arial, Times New Roman or Calibri in size 11 or bigger." Icons should sit at text size and never push the font smaller to make room.

Resume icons example: the same header without icons

For government jobs, large employers and any posting that says "upload your resume to our portal," a header with no icons is the safest choice. It loses nothing.

Pipes between the items do the same job as icons and every system reads them.

Resume icons example: section headings with small icons

If you send your resume by email to a small business, small heading icons can make the page easier to scan. Keep them small and keep the words.

Resume icons example: skills without rating icons

Replace stars and bars with a plain line that says what you did with the skill. It is shorter and it is true.

Five stars in SQL invites the interviewer to find the one query you cannot write. "Wrote the reporting queries behind the monthly dashboard" invites a question about the dashboard, which you can answer.

Resume icons example: a design role where icons fit

Graphic designers, illustrators and UX designers can use more visual elements, because the resume is a sample of their work. Even then, send a plain text version with portal applications.

How to add icons to a resume safely

• Use one icon set, one colour, the same size as your text.
• Put the full text beside every icon.
• Keep icons out of the body: experience bullets, dates and skill levels stay text.
• Export to PDF and copy all the text into a plain editor. If anything is missing or scrambled, remove that icon.
• Keep a second, icon-free version for online portals.

For layout choices around icons, read our resume format guide, resume fonts and the ATS friendly resume guide. For a design portfolio resume, see the graphic designer resume.

Mistakes with icons on a resume

• Icons with no text beside them, so the phone number exists only as a picture.
• Star, bar or dot ratings for skills.
• Three different icon styles on one page.
• Icons in experience bullets, where the software expects words.
• Shrinking the font to fit the icons in.

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Frequently asked questions

Should I use icons on my resume?

Use them only in the contact line, with the full phone number, email, city and link written beside each one. Skip skill rating icons and icons in the body. For online portals and large employers, send a version with no icons at all, because some screening systems drop images or turn them into blank characters.

Are resume icons ATS friendly?

Icons themselves are images, so applicant tracking software usually ignores them or shows a blank character. That is harmless when the text beside the icon carries the information, and harmful when the icon replaces the words. Test by exporting to PDF and pasting the text into a plain editor to see what survives.

Where can I get free icons for a resume?

Many resume builders and word processors include a small icon set, and free libraries offer icons under open licences. Pick one simple set, check the licence allows personal use, and keep every icon the same size and colour. The source matters less than putting the text beside each icon.

How do I add icons to a resume in Word?

Use Insert, then Icons or Pictures, set the icon to text height and choose In Line with Text so it moves with the words. Type the full contact detail beside each icon. Then save as PDF and copy the text into a plain editor to confirm the details still read correctly.

Are CV icons different from resume icons?

No. A CV icon set and a resume icon set are the same small pictures for phone, email, location and links, and the same rule applies to a curriculum vitae in the UK, Ireland or Europe: the text beside each icon must carry the detail on its own. A two page CV gives more room, which is not a reason for more icons.

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Looking for a worked example for your job title? Browse the resume examples by job title.

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