Electronic Resume Formatting Guidelines
October 4, 2011 by Jon Ciampi · Leave a Comment
Formatting Tips for Electronic Résumés
How to Ensure that Automated Recruiting Software Can Read Your Résumé.
A human will not read your résumé until after it is read, parsed, and classified by a computer. A great article from the Wall Street Journal explains how this works (read it here). Even then, a human will only read it if it is a good match to the job description. It won’t matter how pretty you formatted your résumé résumé or how well you write about your qualifications if the computer is unable to interpret the specifics.
Preptel is the first ever solution to identify résumé errors to address the ubiquitous adoption of electronic résumé screening technologies. Our software automatically understands and identifies the strengths, weaknesses, and errors contained within résumés. Hiring companies and job boards, without any notice to the job seeker regarding the problem, inaccurately processes over 40% of all résumés. Our patent-pending technology is proven to identify these errors, and show job seekers how they can climb to the top of the applicant pool for a job opening.
To begin, one must first know almost all hiring companies are using résumé screening technology which has been labeled “Applicant Tracking Software” or “Talent Acquisition” software. This software is used by hiring companies to efficiently manage and focus their recruiting efforts on the 5-10 applicants that should be considered for a position. As a job seeker, the challenge is knowing how to get into that short list of 5-10 applicants.
When a job seeker submits their résumé online to a job, computers do not appreciate style or cleverness. Clever résumés will not be processed correctly by résumé screening software and they will therefore end up in a discard folder.
The use of a nicely formatted résumé with lots of “touches” is restricted to only the onsite interview where you know a human is the only one reading your résumé. For all other purposes, a job seeker needs to send in a résumé that is oriented toward automated parsing and searching and matching, even if it is an introduction through a personal network. Hiring companies are following strict compliance policies that all résumés be managed and tracked electronically. If this new résumé approach makes job seekers nervous, they can add a line at the bottom of his or her résumé that says something like “This résumé was optimized for automated systems. Please contact me directly for a more visually appealing résumé.”
To ensure a job seekers résumé is evaluated correctly, Preptel has created the following formatting recommendations. The rules for computers are really simple when one remembers that computers are not clever. The simpler the résumé, the more likely it will be interpreted correctly.
- A résumé must be in Microsoft Word format
- Do not use Document Headers and Footers
- Do not use graphics
- Do not use “tables” in Microsoft Word
- Do not use “Fields”
- Do not use any résumé template, except one from Preptel
- Never mix different font types or font sizes for data
- Do not use WingDings or any other symbols, such as
- Capitalization does matter
- Contact info comes first
- Use common header terms to start résumé sections
- Keep like data in like order
- Do not combine sections
- Always end company names with common company name words
- Use blank lines and tabs to keep clean formatting.
- Omit page numbers
- Put skills into Work Experience descriptions
- Never omit dates on your work history
- Do not nest data or omit company names on consecutive positions
Do not save a résumé as HTML, PDF, WordPerfect, or RTF. Especially not PDF! Never use PDF for a résumé, as the formatting is very difficult for computers to read. Do not use Microsoft Works or WordPad unless you save the files as “text”.
Many résumé systems cannot convert PDF, HTML, Open Office, or WordPerfect résumés and will discard them. If Microsoft Word is not an option, we recommend RTF (“Save as Text”) as an alternative.
The PDF standard is a “broken” standard. Text cannot be correctly extracted from many PDF files. As a result, if you use a PDF résumé, there is a high likelihood the résumé will be unusable.
We do not recommend the new MS Word DOCX format. The old MS Word format is universal while the new DOCX format is not yet adopted by a broad audience.
Plain is good, while fancy is bad.
We do not recommend the use of document Headers or Footers. Many résumé software programs cannot read information in headers Putting contact information into a header will likely never get read by the software, and the résumé will not contain the contact information on how you can be reached.
Headers and Footers also present another serious problem. The problem with footers is that when the computer reads your résumé the footer data gets inserted into the middle of whatever text spans the two pages.This will result in inappropriate information being inserted into critical parts of your résumé
Graphics such as clip art, photos, logos, and anything that is a bmp, gif, jpg or png
will be turned into a huge mass of garbage characters like this:
shppictpicscalexicscaleyiccropiccroprpiccroptpiccropbpicwpichicwgoapicgalwmetafilbliptaglipupiblipuidafeb
More likely, the graphics will cause some garbage characters to mess up the line spacing, paragraphing, etc. So, your contact information may get distorted or your name may get lost.
We also do not advise writing your name in small caps like e.e. cummins. Do not write your name with expanded text, such as J O H N S M I T H. Do not use pictures or graphics to convey any textual information. This applies to graphical artists and other creative positions. We recommend having a reference to your work online instead of displaying this type of information in your résumé.
While tables provide an easy way to organize information, unfortunately most résumé screening software cannot handle tables and will either scramble the text into an undecipherable mess, or it will space the data with extra lines that may confuse the software. In some cases, all the data in the left most column will appear at the top of the converted résumé.
For example:
| 1999-2000 | Manager, Smith Corp |
| 2000-2004 | Assistant Vice President, NotSmith Corp |
| 2004-2009 | Officer, Big Bank |
Will become:
1999-2000
2000-2004
2004-2009
Manager, Smith Corp
Assistant Vice President, NotSmith Corp
Officer, Big Bank
Fields in Microsoft are specially treated areas of a document where Microsoft Word updates the information automatically or based on some criteria. To résumé screening software, the information will be completely discarded or it will cause the system to stop processing all together. Therefore, we do not recommend any Fields or other automated inserts from MS Word.
Almost all résumé templates are designed to be fancy thus including any number of the items from 2-5. We strongly recommend only using the Preptel template if a template is required to get started.
WRONG: John Pearl
Altering font sizes can cause errors separating the information from the same word into different sections. This can occur using any of the font effects in MS Word, such as SuperScript, Small Caps (e.g., John Pearl), etc.
♣
- JohnPerry@gmail.com
We do not recommend using all caps except for section headers. Capitalization should be applied appropriately to company names, cities and other proper names.
Always put your contact info first at the top of your résumé. Do not have any other information above your contact info. The first information résumé screening software tries to identify is the contact information so this should be first.
Contact info should never be placed on just one or two lines, such as:
John Pearl • 2525 Lombard Street • San Francisco, CA 94123
Instead contact information should be on multiple lines such as below.
John Pearl
2525 Lombard Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
Except for the contact information, use the following section headers.
OBJECTIVE
WORK EXPERIENCE
EDUCATION
LANGUAGES
CERTIFICATIONS
PUBLICATIONS
Do not use strange, or long headers. For instance, never use a header like “PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE AND POST DOCTORATE TRAINING”
Each job that you list should be described in the same order. If one job is described as
Position, Company, Date
City, State
Description
then all of the other jobs should be written in the same style.
Also, always start your work history with position, company, and dates.
Accountant, Big Firm LLC, 1999-2000
Do not dangle dates above the work experience, like
1999-2000
Accountant, Big Firm LLC
Never combine several topics or sections into a single section. This will confuse the software. Examples of combinations include:
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS, COMMUNITY SERVICE, AWARDS, AND TRAINING
Computers do not know if J.M. Huber is a company name or a person. This is very common in companies where their products are identified by their names, such as Cisco, Coca Cola, etc. Always end a company name with a company word like “Inc.” or “Co.” or “Company” or “LLC” or “LLP” or “GmbH”.
Be careful with names that include city, state or country in the name, such as New York Software Inc. The system will confuse the work “New York” as a location and will not identify the information correctly.
Use blank lines between sections and paragraphs. Use tabs to indent information to provide structure to the information and show relationships between information.
Always separate each Work Experience job and each Education school record with a blank line.
Page numbers are not processed correctly and will show up as garbage text in the résumé or right in the middle of important data. It is highly unlikely people that read résumés need page numbers, so omitting them is the safest approach.
Always include skills in the Work Experience section of a résumé. Résumé screening software will match the skills to the job dates and compute the total years of experience for each skill and the date that the skill was last used. Some hiring companies will screen out candidates based on this information.
Do not create a separate section for skills. Also, do not label skills in the work experience section, such as:
Accountant, Big Firm LLC, 1999-2000
Skills: FIFO; Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable
Dates are a critical component for Résumé Screening Software to interpret the résumé. When omitted, the software does not know when to identify the next work history. Therefore, never omit dates.
Dates should be written as Month Year – Month Year. Dates should be on the same line and not separated onto two lines. Keep dates consistent like May 2010 and not like:
May – Ablest Technologies, Maricopa County AZ
Since May 2007 Ablest Technologies Maricopa County AZ
Do not use all number dates such as 06/07. Résumés may be processed in locales that differ from the locale that the résumé was written in thus could be interpreted as June 2007 or as July 2006.
If you held three different positions for ABC Company, treat each position as if were a separate standalone position at a separate company. Repeat the company name for each position you held. Here is an example of the wrong and right way.
WRONG
Systems Integrator, Cisco Systems Inc., May 2004 – January 2010
San Jose, CA
Provided data integration services blah blah blah
Programmer June 2006 – July 2010
Wrote code blah blah blah
RIGHT
Systems Integrator, Cisco Systems Inc., May 2004 – June 2006
San Jose, CA
Provided data integration services blah blah blah
Programmer, Cisco Systems Inc., June 2006 – July 2010
Wrote code blah blah blah
As you can see, there are many rules you have to follow when writing a résumé. We created Preptel so you could allow our software to worry about the rules, and you can focus on more important activities.
If you have comments, questions, or your own ideas, please share them below.
About Jon Ciampi