Carl Bradford

You worked hard on your resume format, and visited a number of online sources to learn how to write a resume, looked at the most popular resume examples and samples.  You considered online resume builder software solutions during your resume preparation.  You feel like you’ve covered all the important bases as you learned how to make a resume that you’re comfortable with.

Now you feel confident you have the best resume format possible.   You even saved the resume as an Adobe PDF document to protect all your nice formatting.

Applying to the great job with your new resume

Your resume just arrived via email to that great job post you found a few minutes ago.  You know, the one that reads like it was hand tailored just for you.

Andy, the company recruiter has just arrived to begin work, sits down at his desk, turns on his computer and logs in to review all the resumes now sitting in his electronic in-box.  Your resume is among those he is scheduled to review.

He takes a sip of coffee, clicks his mouse and the resume reviews begin.  How will your resume stack up?

Finally he gets to your resume and opens it for review. What he sees is a completely wrecked format.  Spaces between paragraphs have been removed, there are some odd characters in place of those nice bullet points, information in columns and tables are now completed scrambled.  He can’t make heads or tails of your resume.  Frustrated and with only a few seconds (no more than about 30 seconds), to spend on each resume before deciding whether or not to continue his review, he moves your resume into the  reject stack.

You’ve just experienced a resume failure.

What happened behind the scene to your resume

Here’s what happened to you.  Technology “ate your resume.”

Many employers do not receive your resume via email, instead your resume is parased into their ATS (Applicant Tracking System).  In other words, technology interpreted your resume formatting and attempted to put it into a readable form within the ATS so it could be read easily by the recruiter and then managed much like a sales professional manages customer profiles within their customer relationship management system.

While not all ATS will scramble your resume like this, many will.  The trouble is, you have no way of knowing if the recruiter for that great job is using one that is user friendly to your resume or not.

The solution is never to use a resume format that runs the risk of getting abused by technology.  There are best resume formats that are safe to use and will avoid your resume going into that dreaded “resume black hole.”

This problem is aggravated by the fact that most professional resume writers don’t have the behind the scene background that I do.  You’ll understand why when you read my bio.

You can find out just which format is the best resume format by joining our Members Only Section.