Spent 2 years formatting my resume in Word until a recruiter in Chicago laughed at me

I had every bullet point perfectly aligned with tabs and spaces, looked beautiful, but a recruiter straight up told me it was unreadable on their system because the formatting broke. Turns out applicant tracking systems just read plain text, so my fancy columns and boxes were hiding half my job history. Has anyone else wasted time on formatting that literally nobody sees?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_holly2d ago

Laughed along with you because I did the exact same thing - spent three days getting my columns to line up perfectly only to find out my work experience was showing up as a jumbled mess of random text on the other end. Honestly felt like putting on a fancy suit for a blind date that turned out to be a video call where nobody could even see what you were wearing. At least now we know the secret handshake, right?

lee6892d ago

Totally disagree though... I feel like the formatting shows you care about details, and even if they strip it, someone might see a screenshot or printout later. @the_holly might've put in that work for nothing once, but I'd rather overdo it than send something sloppy...

shanec612d ago

Ugh, I actually read an article about this exact thing last week and it said most big companies use software that strips all formatting into raw text anyway. So all those hours spent on perfect spacing and fancy tables are basically invisible to the people who actually decide on interviews. It's such a waste of time, but the job market feels like it's designed to trick you into overcomplicating things.