Dumb things such as having a tiny bit of color or a slightly less basic format can make or break you when the recruiter/hirer is sifting through the pile. Besides, it takes all of ten minutes to do this and be done with it.
It's like fashion. Arbitrary but just having the basics understood goes such a long way professionally and socially compared to the effort expended
Maybe this is a good use case for AI. Write your resume then let AI rewrite it to be aesthetically pleasing to resume readers.
People like my interior decorating, I can appreciate other things that are aesthetically pleasing, and I've made my share of actual art. I just don't think I have it in me to understand whatever in the world is going through someone's mind when they're displeased with this resume. It's a missing faculty like blindness or tone deafness. When I get a resume or an email I just read it, I don't sit there and hem and haw over how many pixels the bullet point is indented or whatever it is.
This is why resumes should be abolished entirely and replaced by a standardized database you put your experience and skillset into. Anything an employer wants to know has to go in a standardized field. No discrimination can possibly occur based on your ability to format a piece of paper according to invisible, unpredictable metrics that you might have no faculty for and have no bearing on your ability to do the job.
I think it’s telling that you have received very valid and constructive criticism on this resume from multiple people, yet you still can’t see why this is a bad resume. You know from data and observation that in the real world this is in fact a bad resume, because it doesn’t get you interviews and offers - which is the point of a resume.
It's not that they are displeased with the Word doc or examining every detail. Just that aesthetically pleasing things attract our good graces on a subconscious level, and CVs are in competition with other CVs. Really we are overcomplicating this. The OP could have fixed the CV in the time it took us to discuss it.
I'd say too often what happens is that engineer minded types rebel against unwritten norms like these and derive a sense of moral superiority from being immune to them, when ironically from an engineering POV it would make more sense to just do these little things, iron the shirts, use a template, and call it a day.
It's like fashion. Arbitrary but just having the basics understood goes such a long way professionally and socially compared to the effort expended