One critique about my resume format from a hiring manager in Austin changed my whole approach

I had been using the same two column resume layout for about 6 years. It looked clean on my screen, won some compliments from friends. Then last spring I applied to a logistics coordinator job in Austin. The hiring manager called me after the interview, not to offer the job, but to give feedback. He said, "The ATS system probably can't read your columns. It scrambles your dates and job titles." I had never thought about that. I changed to a simple single column, plain text, no tables or graphics. Within 3 weeks I got 4 callbacks from jobs I had applied to months earlier. The irony is the old layout looked better, but it was invisible to the software. Has anyone else had to give up a fancy format for the sake of the machine readers? How much design is worth losing to get past that first filter?

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1 Comment

daniel47410d ago

Wait, people still use two column resumes in 2024? Yeah, the ATS thing is real, I learned that the hard way too. Plain and boring wins every time.