Looking for a Job? Avoid These Recruiter Pet Peeves

Interesting about sending only the Word document format resumes. Does this pertain to submitting our resumes on company websites and Linkedin as well? I have always submitted PDF when applying electronically online, but with agencies where I talked with actual recruiters over the phone, I’d send Word format since they requested for those.

Hi @Zhang300hours, thanks for commenting! Yes, the need for Word format applies to electronic websites and portals too. In fact, it is very important that those be Word documents because many computerized resume scanning systems cannot read PDFs. And that is how most companies mine their hundreds of applicants – through automatic scanning software. So your resume might have been skipped over because it was a PDF and you never knew it! I used to do the same thing until I heard about this tip. Now I only submit Word docs no matter the method of application.

Hope this helps!

Rachel Bryant, CFA

Thanks for the article @RachelBryantCFA‌! It just seems messy though, formatting never translates well across word, which is why PDF came about as a popular choice for resumes in the first place. Like @zhang300hours‌, generally I think the tips are solid but the one I’m not sure about is the Word resume recommendation. How sure are you of this recommendation and is it ALWAYS Word, or just when you’re dealing with recruiters?