TWO COLUMN / THE ATLAS TEMPLATE
An understated side column holds supporting facts beside the main experience narrative. Atlas balances a substantial history with a concise skills overview.
Create and export your resume with CVura.Product Designer
Portland, OR · jordan@example.com
Product designer making complex workflows feel simple. Experienced in research, accessible interfaces, and working closely with engineering teams.
Fieldwork Studio
Common Ground
Product design · User research · Prototyping · Figma · Accessibility · Design systems
BFA, Communication Design · Pacific Northwest College of Art · 2021
THE DESIGN THINKING
The wide main column gives achievements enough room, while the narrow column groups skills and education. The two areas have different jobs rather than competing for attention.
WHEN TO CHOOSE ATLAS
Atlas puts supporting facts in a narrow column beside the main experience area. It can work when skills and education are brief while recent roles need room for explanation. It is less comfortable when both columns contain long paragraphs. Try your actual longest qualification and skill name before choosing it. Then inspect the exported text order: a visually tidy sidebar can still interrupt the sequence recovered by software. Use a single-column alternative if the application instructions or your file check call for one.
If your education and core tools are straightforward, the supporting area can hold them without repeatedly interrupting the work history. Use the main column to explain the more complex part of the application: decisions, ownership, and results. The two areas should complement each other rather than repeat the same phrases.
Atlas can be useful when a person will review the document directly and compare experience with supporting facts. The layout makes those different reading tasks visible. Still inspect the final file and follow any requested format; visual convenience for a person does not determine how another system will extract the text.
An operations professional may have worked in planning, service, and team supervision. The main column can connect those roles while the sidebar identifies recurring capabilities. Keep the chronology explicit so the design does not make a varied background look like several unrelated skill lists with no progression.
A FICTIONAL WORKED EXAMPLE
In this fictional scenario, Miriam has worked in service planning and warehouse coordination. Her initial draft puts a long explanation of capacity planning into Skills, leaving little room for education. She moves the explanation into an experience bullet and shortens the supporting list to recognizable capabilities. Atlas now lets the main column show the decision while the side column helps the reader locate relevant knowledge.
Capacity planning: responsible for staffing, queues, workload, and operations.
Reviewed backlog age and work types with shift leads, separating capacity shortages from rework before recommending changes to the weekly staffing plan.
The revision explains the analytical contribution and the decision it supported. Capacity planning can remain a brief skill label because the work now provides its evidence. This is the central editorial advantage of Atlas: supporting facts stay compact while the main narrative carries reasoning. Miriam does not need to duplicate the whole example in both places or turn the sidebar into a miniature essay.
FROM SAMPLE TO YOUR RESUME
Choose the roles and contributions that establish your fit. Make sure each can be understood without consulting another column. Only then select the short skills and education facts that help interpret that history. This prevents the supporting area from determining the story simply because it looks available to fill.
Use the full qualification or tool name where needed, but remove explanations that belong with experience. Check long credentials for awkward wrapping. If a qualification requires important status information, preserve that fact even if it takes another line; brevity should not make completed and pending qualifications look the same.
Inspect the print preview and the text you can select or extract from the final document. Confirm that dates remain associated with roles and that supporting facts do not interrupt a sentence. If the destination asks for a simpler structure, compare a single-column version using the same edited content.
TRY THIS WEBSITE LAYOUT
Free browser template. No account. Example details are fictional.
THE FINAL EDIT
A summary in the main area and a second personal statement in the supporting area divide attention. Give each part one job. The main narrative explains your contribution; the sidebar records concise supporting facts. If both tell the same story, remove the weaker version and restore space.
Old courses, unrelated software, and long interests can accumulate because the column appears separate. They still consume attention. Keep only details that help assess this application, and move substantive project evidence into experience rather than hiding it among short factual labels.
GOOD QUESTIONS
It is better suited to a selected list. A narrow supporting area makes long entries wrap quickly. Group only closely related skills and retain the ones that matter to the vacancy; explain specialist depth through the main experience.
This website layout places education with supporting information. If your application requires education to lead the document, choose a workflow that supports that structure rather than assuming the browser editor can freely rearrange the template’s sections.
No layout has universal behavior across receiving systems. Follow the requested file type and review the actual document’s reading order. A direct-share version can differ from the simpler version you use for a form with specific requirements.
PUT THE IDEA TO WORK
Fictional practice case: Saira is a procurement analyst studying toward an additional professional qualification. All qualifications and organizations in this exercise are invented. Her Atlas sidebar is crowded because she has included every module description alongside skills, dates, and education.
State that the qualification is in progress and distinguish completed study from an award already earned. A compact sidebar is useful only if shortening an entry does not quietly change what the applicant is entitled to claim.
If a studied method informed a real supplier-comparison exercise, explain that work in the main experience column. Describe Saira's contribution and the decision it supported, rather than placing a paragraph about procurement theory beside the education dates.
Keep module names only when they add relevant knowledge that the work history does not demonstrate. Atlas offers parallel reading areas, but it does not require equal quantities of information on each side.
Look at the qualification entry without its surrounding paragraphs. Its title, current status, and relevant date should still be unambiguous. Then check that the experience explanation reads as employment evidence rather than a claim to the unfinished credential.
Explain study that is still in progressA USEFUL NEXT READ
Present senior experience through decision-making, organizational scope, and attributable outcomes while keeping a long career readable and relevant.
Read the guideCheck whether your resume text survives export, inspect reading order and contact details, and understand what a local extraction test cannot prove.
Read the guideCOMPARE THE TRADEOFFS
Two columns. One coherent story.
A measured senior presence
YOUR NEXT STEP
Take the writing ideas from this example into your next application. Choose a layout in CVura, prepare your resume and export the format you need.
