14 tips to make your resume readable by recruitment software
With the use of technology for the screening, matching and sourcing candidates on the rise, increasingly your resume will not be read by a human until after it is read, parsed, and classified by a computer.
So forget about the pretty graphics and nice borders to make your resume look good for the hiring manager or recruiter, because the software that initially reads your resume can only see this ‘;anf;oasdfpoahs;gasfughv;asdnfg;asubfg;auhd’ (now just in case you are like me, not technical, that’s not software code - that’s just me saying that it’s a mess and will not be read properly by the recruitment software. This is obviously an issue if you are trying to get past first base.
Here’s what to remember
1. You resume must be in Microsoft Word or (Update) PDF format, Not HTML, WordPerfect or RTF.
2. Looks are deceiving: Plain is good, Fancy is bad. No headers & footers, no graphics, no tables in Word, no fields in Word - and don’t use resume templates particularly resume templates from Microsoft (sorry Gatesy!)
3. Don’t mix font types or size for data, it sounds boring I know but it’s the actual content that is important not the way that the content looks to recruiters and hiring managers.
4. Capitalisation does matter. Don’t use CAPS unless you need to.
5. See what your resume looks like in plain text. Resume systems convert the resumes into plain text and then they read and process plain text.
6. Contact information should comes first. If you want a job, let people know how they can get in touch to speak with you about the job opportunity.
7. Use common header terms to start resume sections eg: [Job Objective] [Education] [Project Experience]
8. Do not use columns or tables for formatting anything.
9. Keep like data in order eg: [Dates] [Company] [Position Title] [Description]
10. Do not combine sections.
11. Always end company names with common company name words. eg Pty Ltd, Inc, LLC, Ltd.
12. Omit page numbers.
13. Put key words into work history descriptions. eg: Business Development, Project Controls, Scheduling, Drafting, Project Management, Mining & Minerals, Energy etc
14. Don’t put references on your resume, EVER.
Hope this helps
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Good article Riges. Not many people realise how automated these process are these days. The only 2 cents I would add are;
1. Most decent parsing systems worth their salt can read PDF attachments these days.
2. I am amazed at how many systems still can’t read .docx attachments. It is crazy but to be safe it is best to save your Word docs as .doc (97-2003).
3. Use line breaks and paragraphs generously. Don’t write in big continuous blocks of text. (This makes your resume unreadable for the recruiter as much as for the parsing software).
Riges, great article. Some extra question for you that people have asked me in the past but which I defer to your professional expertise:
1. On many application sites such as seek and even recruitment firms they invite you to write a letter of introduction or similar. Is there any valu in doing so and is it read by the recruiter or parsed (and passed) by the same automated systems ?
2. If the automatic system has difficulty in reading your CV due to any of the points you note abovm does the system reject the CV, or provide some sort of damaged version leaving out the bits it can’t read or something else? If the system can’t read you CV will the recruiter ever read it or just go with the parsed ones ignoring yours?
Cheers
Hi Peter - thank you for contributing.
1. I cannot speak about other recruitment firms, but we definitely read the supporting documentation as it tells us the story why the applicant feels they have the relevant skills and experience to do the job from their perspective. This is effectively another screening stage in the process. Additionally, I find the resume doesn’t typically tell the whole story.
2. We have this issue sometimes with the system we use, however, we make the effort to contact those candidate to get them to submit their CV via email. My view is that if you don’t do that then we could possibly be missing out on the candidate that our client may be looking for.
Hope this gives you an insight into our thinking.
Thanks
@rigesyounan