Many thanks for uploading your CV while registering with us. We are sure that you have invested a lot of time designing your CV with the intension to make it easy for our consultants grasping your experience, your knowledge and your skills.
However, what is a nice CV for humans with a lot of "power touches" is "unreadable" for an automated processing software. Computers do not appreciate style or cleverness. Fancy designed CVs will not be processed correctly by a resume software and consultants will not be able to match your data in the database with your next dream job.
TOP TIP: Whenever you are asked to upload your CV to a recruiter's database - and this applies not only to us but for all recruiting companies who are using a professional software - you should provide two versions of you resume: one for sending to a human being and one for sending elsewhere (job-board, corporate application portal, etc.). If that makes you nervous, just add a line at the bottom of your resume that says something like "This resume was optimized for automated systems. Please contact me directly for a more visually appealing resume."
Following you will find some dos and don'ts for optimising your CV for resume parsing in any recruiting software. (These tips are taken from free accessible website resources of one of the leading parsing software provider "Sovren / a text kernel company").
1. NEVER USE PDF. NEVER USE APPLE PAGES.
Your resume should be in Microsoft™ Word format.
2. Looks are deceiving.
Plain is good. Fancy is bad.
3. Never mix different font types or font sizes for data.
4. Capitalization does matter.
Do not use all caps unless there is a good reason to do so.
5. EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Change the font size to 8 point or less and see if it still reads correctly. Now, save your resume as plain text (".txt"), and see if it still reads correctly.
6. Contact info comes first.
If you want a job, put your contact info FIRST.
7. Use common header terms to start resume sections, and put them on separate lines.
8. Do not use "columns" or "tables" for formatting anything.
NEVER use columns or tables to format your education or work history or any other Important piece of data on your resume.
9. Keep like data in like order.
Each job that you list should be described in the same order.
10. Do not combine sections.
Never combine several topics or sections into a single section. This is really important!
11. Always end company names with common company name words.
12. Use blank lines between sections/paragraphs, but do not use blank lines within paragraphs.
13. Omit page numbers.
14. Put skills into Work History descriptions.
15. Never omit dates on your work history! EVER!
A resume that omits dates of jobs held is NOT going to get you hired.
16. Do not nest data or omit company names on consecutive positions.
If you held several different positions for ABC Company, treat each position as if it were a separate, standalone position.
17. Do not write explanatory data or company-specific data until AFTER you have listed dates, company name and job title.
18. Do not put employer street addresses, or supervisor or reference information, into your work history.
Put the city and state after the employer’s name, but NEVER put any other employer info (such as street address, postal code, phone numbers, supervisor names, etc.).
19. Do not put references on your resume.
References are unnecessary unless asked for.