My resume template completely failed me at a job fair last month

Honestly, I showed up to a local job fair in Portland thinking I had everything ready. Handed my resume to three different recruiters and got the same look each time, like they were confused. One lady actually said 'this format is gonna get filtered out by our system in two seconds.' Turns out my fancy two column layout was a mess for keyword scanning. Switched to a basic single column text based version the next week and got way more callbacks. Has anyone else had a recruiter flat out tell you your resume was garbage in person?

2 comments

2 Comments

graceblack14d ago

Yeah, that 'filtered out by our system' comment hit home for me too. I had a two column layout for months and barely got calls, then switched to a plain single column format with standard section headers and it was like night and day difference. It sucks that style doesn't matter as much as the machine reading it, but once I treated my resume like a text file, recruiters actually started responding.

blairtaylor14d ago

Gotta call this one out - that two column layout probably got you noticed more than the plain text version. Those ATS filters are a myth half the time, and real human eyes glaze over a wall of plain text. My buddy runs a small shop downtown and he flat out said he tosses resumes that look like they were written in 1995. A little style shows you put in effort, and if a company can't handle a simple two column format, maybe their system is the problem not your resume.