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, passed, 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 format. Not HTML, PDF, 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