Posted by Doreen Blakely
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How to Ensure that Recruiting Software Can Read Your Resume
Your resume will not be read by a human until after it is read, parsed, and classified by a computer – and even then it will only be read by a human if it is a good search match. It won’t matter at all how pretty your painted Easter egg looks to a human, if it looks like scrambled eggs to a computer. And if it looks like scrambled eggs, it’s not likely to get any search “hits”
Computers do not appreciate style or cleverness. Quirky, clever resumes will not be processed correctly by resume software and they will therefore end up in a cold dark place where no one will ever see it. The rules for computers are really simple when you remember that computers are not clever. They are like the really smart nerd in your high school History class – big on facts, clueless on how they all fit together and what they all mean. So, let’s make it easy for the computer to like you, ok?
Here are THE RULES:
We are going on with Rules #8-12 today – stay tuned for more coming soon!
RULE #8 | Always end company names with common company name words.
You know that J.M. Huber is an employer company name. Unfortunately, the computer probably does not know that. The solution is to always end a company name with a company word like “Inc.” or “Co.” or “Company” or “LLC” or “LLP” or “GmbH”. So, write J.M. Huber as J.M. Huber, Inc. or J.M. Huber Co. You are not applying for a job at J.M. Huber, so they will not care.
And yes, this rule applies to big companies as well as little companies. If you worked for IBM, write IBM, Inc. “Procter & Gamble” should be written as Procter & Gamble, Inc. “Enron” should be written as Enron, Inc. (or better yet, as “Major Energy Trading Company” J).
RULE #9 | Use blank lines between sections/paragraphs, but do not use blank lines within paragraphs.
It is very important that you separate each Work History job and each Education school record with a blank line, and that there are no blank lines within logical paragraphs. “Blank line” means an actual blank line placed there by your word processor program, not just visual spacing that looks like a blank line but really is not.
RULE #10 | Do not save your resume as HTML, PDF, WordPerfect or RTF.
Recruiters want resumes in Microsoft Word. Many resume systems cannot convert PDF, HTML or WordPerfect resumes and will discard them. If you do not want to use Microsoft Word, do NOT use RTF, use “Text” instead. Save your resume as a plain text file, with a .txt extension.
Here is how some resume systems “see” RTF files:
{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\uc1 \deff0\deflang1033\deflangfe1033{\fonttbl{\f0\froman\fcharset0\fprq2{\*\panose 02020603050405020304}Times New Roman;}{\f1\fswiss\fcharset0\fprq2{\*\panose 020b0604020202020204}Arial;}{\f2\fmodern\fcharset0\fprq1{\*\panose 02070309020205020404}Courier New;}{\f3\froman\fcharset2\fprq2{\*\panose 05050102010706020507}Symbol;}{\f42\froman\fcharset238\fprq2 Times New Roman CE;}{\f43\froman\fcharset204\fprq2 Times New Roman Cyr;}{\f45\froman\fcharset161\fprq2 Times New Roman Greek;}{\f46\froman\fcharset162\fprq2 Times New Roman Tur;}{\f47\froman\fcharset186\fprq2 Times New Roman Baltic;}{\f48\fswiss\fchars
RULE #11 | Save your resume as plain text, and see if it still “reads” correctly.
Resume systems do NOT read resumes directly. They first convert the resumes into plain text, and then they read and process that plain text. So, ALWAYS make sure that you save a copy of your resume as plain text and then open that plain text and make sure that it still reads like it should, with no funky formatting problems. You may be surprised….
RULE #12 | Omit page numbers.
Page numbers will probably show up as garbage in your resume. The computer does not need page numbers. Your resume does not need page numbers, either.
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