A resume app for the iPhone comes up short.
Can you use technology to build a better resume and help in your job search? Certainly. But use technology when it helps, not because it’s there.
Case in point: Recruiter Jane Turkewitz took to task a company that makes an application to build a fast resume on your iPhone. She gave the app, Resume Pro, from Vur Good Apps, a failing grade because it is clumsy and unreliable and “nobody wants to spend time typing on itty-bitty keypads. ”
But what really frosted her was that the Resume Pro offers the option to include a portrait. That’s a Resume 101 rule that any product claiming to provide a professional resume writing experience should know: Never attach a photo.
Why?
- The image can make your resume file more difficult to open or slower to process. Some Applicant Tracking System (ATS) software is programmed to discard resumes with extraneous files or unreadable formats; others can have trouble reading the files and will not categorize it properly. Recruiters busy scanning hundreds of resumes a day are also less likely to view your file if it is at all difficult to open or view.
- Many human-resources organizations will discard any resume that they think advertises an applicant’s race, religion, ethnicity or other factors barred from consideration in the hiring process by equal-opportunity employment standards. Your picture is a big advertisement for these disallowed categories.
Then there’s the PDF factor. Vur Good’s Resume Pro claims it will “send a professional-looking PDF resume.” Another resume no-no. Recruiters and certified professional resume writers advise job seekers that there is really only one file format that is suitable for a resume: Microsoft Word, and the most recent version at that. Microsoft Word is all but the standard for text-editing software, and most other applications will open Word files. Why would you risk sending a recruiter or hiring manager a resume in a file format they might not have?
There’s plenty of opportunity to build tools for your job search on the iPhone and other mobile devices. Salesforce CRM Personal Edition is already a terrific application to run your job-search contacts and tools the way you used to run contacts on the job; RSS, Twitter and search tools can keep you apprised of opportunities in real time; and a mythical resume tracker might alert you to which version of the resume you sent with your application as you walk into the interview. But for now, make sure the technology you use on the job search isn’t just a nifty new toy.
(iPhone by swruler9284, CC3.0)
For more on resume file formats:
- Resume Tips: Your-Name-Here.doc
- When Companies Merge, Do Resumes Fall Through the Cracks?
- Lying on Your Resume
- The Machine Ate My Resume
What about meta-data and all the annoying red marks on word docs? PDFs get rid of all that. Attorneys send their docs to courts and to each other in PDFs, why not resumes and cover letters?
What legal professional can’t read PDFs anyway? Are people really that technologically bankrupt?
I hear you. Who doesn’t have Adobe reader and who can’t download it for free, if needed? But this is less about who can’t open it, then who won’t open it. Remember you’re not sending your resume to fellow legal professionals; you’re sending it to recruiters who must sift through hundreds of resumes every day. If they have to use another program to open your resume than they use for every other resume, they might just choose to move on. The advice from recruiters, career coaches and resume writers is
“Don’t risk it, use the standard – Microsoft Word.”
Thanks for reading and thanks for writing. We need more heated comments.
The irony here is that HR’s mission is (or is supposed to be) to look for the best candidates for the company – the ones who, “think outside the box.” Yet, HR themselves… well, you had better standardize yourself so that the weak-minded fools doing the sorting can have an easy time of it.
Think of all the folks who wouldn’t get hired (and help the company succeed) because their 8.5×11 resume or MS Word resume didn’t pass through the right filters… even someone like Bill Gates wouldn’t get hired because of a conspicuous lack of a degree.
Hey, HR folks: think outside your box.
[...] to include elements such as photographs or save your electronic resume in a format such as PDF. Don’t do either: Photos can choke many applicant tracking systems (ATSes) and cause difficulties with HR [...]