The Essential Guide to Formatting Your Resume

Applying for jobs through online portals can feel like sending your resume into space. It’s frustrating when you spend hours on a beautiful design only to have the system scramble your information. This week, Jeff and I are demystifying the "robot" reading your resume and how to work WITH the Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

This week, Jeff and I talk about:

• The reality of how ATS scanners "read" and rank your resume
• Why "Easy Apply" might be hurting your chances
• The critical step of correcting autofill errors in application portals
• Design "no-nos" like Canva templates, excessive text boxes, and complex graphics
• How to use keywording to jump to the top of the pile
• The "hidden text" myth and why you should never use it
• Finding the balance between ATS-friendly and human-friendly design

Listen in to help us, help you give yourself the best chance of landing your Next Job… NOW :)

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https://youtu.be/z9oEbG1GhqM?si=qOCB3yLLnETzFEJY

Greg’s Resume WRITING Services can be found here: 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The whole system right now needs to be re-examined because the other thing that like grinds my gear so much is we have this whole system where we've we've solved the discrimination thing because you can't put your big picture in your resume anymore. Well, guess what? You are supposed to have a LinkedIn profile, and your LinkedIn profile is not complete unless you do have a picture. In fact, LinkedIn itself will say, no one's gonna look at your profile because you don't have a picture here. It's incomplete. You'll have 70 times more profile views if you add a picture. What about the people who are trying to get hired despite how they look? If they're older, for example, like that is a concern, and we just don't have a fix for that in the current system, and it's infuriating.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Welcome to Next Job Now. The podcast where we help you get your next job right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Welcome to the podcast. I'm Greg Langstaff. I'm a certified resume strategist. I've written over 2,000 resumes, and I love helping people get new jobs.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

And I'm Jeff, and I have a lot of questions about job searching. Together, we're gonna talk about everything you need to know about landing your next role. Today we are talking about resume templates and the ATS system. And any of its rules and what it is and how to beat it.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

Yeah, let's beat that ATS.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Let's beat that ATS. So, what do you have to say to those who don't even consider formatting for ATS?

SPEAKER_00 1:51

I mean, you're applying through a software that is literally an applicant tracking system. If you're applying to a company that has more than probably five employees, it's gonna go through an ATS. They are using that to like filter, to sort who are the most likely candidates. It's reading your resume. So like your resume has to be set up to be read by an ATS scanner, and it has to be optimized so that an ATS scanner is judging you as qualified and as a top candidate, so that when the hiring managers are reading the resumes, yours is going to be towards the top of the pile. They're gonna actually pay attention, they're gonna consider you to be a good candidate. And if you're not doing all that, you might not even have a chance.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

So when we've kind of talked about the how the AC ATS system works in the past, but how important is it that we correct the upload to the portal? So when you submit your application and then your education ends up in your professional experience, your professional experience ends up in your education, or your dates get mixed up for a job. Do we need to go through and fix all of those mistakes, or can we just apply because they're gonna look at our resume eventually anyway? So it doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

See, this is another reason I'm anti-easy apply. It's like going through the portal and updating the information that it's pulled from your resume is absolutely critical. It is. Yes, because that process exists because these companies and even the companies who built the ATS don't trust it to perfectly read the document every time. So that's their way of saying, hey, we might have got this wrong. Here's a chance to fix it. And that's why we have to do that annoying thing where we re-enter all the information that was in our resume into those little boxes.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

And how do you feel about the fact that those portals will force us to answer questions that we intentionally kind of left off? Graduation dates, addresses.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

I hate it. I hate it. It's immoral, it needs to stop. We should not be allowing companies to ask your graduation dates. I think it should be illegal because we all know that most people finish their bachelor's degree when they're 22 years old. And from that, if we have your graduation date, we can assume your exact age.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

We have it uploading to the system. Yes, you should correct it. Make sure that what you're uploading matches. Yes. Now, is that a template issue that that's why it's being moved around, or just it doesn't matter what template you have, you're likely gonna need to do that sweep. I would always do the sweep.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Uh, because even the most straightforward of templates like can be misinterpreted. But like if you're using a template that was designed intentionally for ATS, you're more likely to not have to worry about that. It's gonna save you a lot of time. And in systems where they don't have that second degree where you get to check, you're in much better uh position.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

You just said when you have a template that's designed for ATS, all of your templates, you design them specifically for ATS. So whether it's a one column, two column, you've built it designed so that it can still be read in a proper order. Can you please explain what you mean built for ATS? A template.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

Yeah, so there's a bunch of rules that we need to follow. Like we want to make sure that we're not using random text boxes on all around the screen because it may, all around the page, it may read them out of order. There's even some cases where like a text box might not show up in an ATS. That's easy enough to check when you submit. But like that is a big problem. And then another issue is like people are adding graphics. Graphics can be misinterpreted. It could be it could be pulled as text if there's some underlying code in that like image that you included. Um, colors, like colors are generally safe, but we don't want to layer colors on top of each other too much. Like one, you know, a nice blue with white font on top, that's fine. But like, we're not gonna go with like uh a gray background with then some like pink overlay and a splash of orange and a gradient, like that kind of stuff just it doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

I was picturing like a 3D glasses. If the hiring manager put the 3D glasses on, they'd be like, whoa, man, very cool.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

I mean, that would stand out if you knew you could put the uh resume and the 3D glasses in the hiring manager's hand.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah, that's a that's an in-person printing resume. Yes, yeah, yeah. But for the ATS, we're breaking some rules, probably doing that.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Yeah, and like color-wise, I usually stick to like blue, like a navy blue, gray, black and white, maybe a little pink or a little green, but like subtle professional colors.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Now you talked about some rules. Let's do an activity. And it's called how to tank your ATS readability. Okay. So we're gonna play a little game. We have these whiteboards. Uh courtesy of Telestrations. Telestrations. Never play Telestrations.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

It's a good time.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

You're an artist. You would enjoy Telestrations.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

I would enjoy Telestrations.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Although I'll say it's important to have someone who's also bad at art to make telestrations fun.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

But you can have a good, a good artist as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

All right, so what we're gonna do in this activity is we're going to go back and forth and write down the best way to tank your ATS readability. Okay. And then we're going to make sure that we do not have the same answer. So there's lots of different ways to tank your ATS. Don't put them all down. Just put one right now. Okay. So right now, on your sheet, but your goal is don't use the same one that I'm going to use. All right. So then let's say the number one way to tank it is two.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

Hey, I have a question for you.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Ask me anything.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Um, with your affliction, are you okay to use uh whiteboard markers?

SPEAKER_01 8:23

My affliction.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

You're left-handed.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

I know. It's gonna get dirty. This episode this episode's our dirtiest episode. Oh, man. Alright. Three, two, one, reveal. Use Canva. Skip keywording. Mmm. What's the number? Which one gets the point? I think I win.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

You actually do win. Yeah. I was afraid to use the same one as you, so I went to the second most. What do you mean by skip keywording? Okay, so like there's two parts to ranking well on an ATS. Like, yeah, you gotta be readable. And you're right. If you're using Canva, you're probably like not in a position where it's even gonna see all your experience. But you also want to rank well in the ATS because it sorts candidates based on relevance for the reader. Contrary to popular belief, it's very uncommon that it will just say, don't read this person's resume at all. But it will likely push you to the bottom, and maybe they only needed five people they wanted to interview, and before they even get down to you, they've already got their five, and then you have barely a chance. Yeah. So like keywording is really the practice of looking at the job description, seeing what words they're using to describe the work you'll do in the job, and then putting those words two to three times into your resume. We use like a key skills section so we can just pop them in there without any context. But then it's also really important to use these to inspire your bullet points.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Inspire or like in the bullet point?

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Well, if you're speaking about them properly, they will come up word for word. But like that's easy. A keyword is usually a one-to-three-word phrase.

SPEAKER_01 10:06

Give me an example.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Uh email marketing.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Gotcha. Yeah. Or like uh cardiovascular anesthesiology.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

So a very specific industry term for that reason. Or sorry, cardiac anesthesiology.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Good correction. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

There could be a couple people out there who knew who caught that.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

I was judging you quietly for your lack of expanded vocabulary. I know thousands of words, as we know. So yeah. Should we just uh skip to the next one? Yeah, sure. All right. Another way to tank your ATS readability. I'm winning. For sure. All right. Three, two, one.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Print and scan to save as PDF. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

So if you print your resume and then rescan it so you can save it as a PDF, you've absolutely destroyed your readability.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Yes. If you're down, if you are creating your resume on a computer, you can save it as a PDF. Both Google Docs and Word, and maybe even pages.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Don't scan to upload your resume.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

No. But what I feel like you've cheated a little bit here because who's doing that?

SPEAKER_01 11:27

Someone is doing this.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

We have had a couple clients send their resume and it's a scanned printed page. Okay, I wrote uh not checkslash correct the autofill form, which is what we were talking about earlier. Yeah. Like you you gotta take some time to see if what it pulled from your resume is accurate.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Alright, yours is more realistic, so we'll give you the point.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Do you want a hack for this? Do you want to hack for this? I always love a hack. Okay. So your resume as a document might not be perfectly formatted for copying and pasting.

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Like bullet points in a Word doc are gonna come up weird when you copy and paste them into like a form.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

So I would always have a separate document that is your resume built to copy and paste. So instead of like actual bullet points, it's just the dash and then the space. So it'll go in nicely. It's it's formatted so there is a space between like the overview and the bullet points, and it's not just that auto like fake block that or the paragraph extension thing. Like, and then it might be also you might have a version for various word count limits as well. Because jobs, specific jobs might have a character count, a word count. So you have your your 2000 character version, you have your 1000 character version.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

Another way to tank your ATS readability. I'm ready.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

I'm gonna get this one.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Okay, ready? Alright, three, two, one. Not have your name at the top. Oh I just have a funny story here.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

You do? Yeah. This has happened? Yeah. Yeah, so like, oh, you like a few people, fun template design, but it's like your name maybe is on the right, slightly lower than like the city you're from. So I've I've had someone whose name was like Alice or something, I don't remember the exact name, but was from a town called like I don't know, Trenton. And it was like they got an interview, so I guess this kind of worked, but the interview was like, hello Trenton, like we're excited to invite you for an interview.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Oh my god, because it's gonna read your name as the first thing in the document. Yeah. So then it auto-populated to hello Trenton. Yeah, and Trenton got an interview. So it didn't tank the ATS readability. Well no, you're right.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

No, this is not a good one, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

It it tanked the readability because your name's not Trenton.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Yes. Yes, it did tank your readability, but your resume it didn't tank your resume, it didn't tank your chances. It was a good resume, otherwise.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

So I said white hidden text.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Where you just copy and paste the job description. They can see that.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:23

It shows up.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Yes. Like the ATS pulls it, and even in those auto-populate forms, it's gonna have all that there. So if you have the job description just sitting there, they're gonna notice.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

It's gonna confuse the heck, especially your name might end up being coordinator special events.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Well, if I was to do that, which I would never do, I definitely wouldn't put it at the top. In the header? You put it in the footer. This is not a good one. I wouldn't do it. Do it here to do it. Don't do it! Don't do it. Don't do it.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Alright. That's it for me. Alright. Ah, the winner is. I think it's you. Let us know in the comments who won.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Oh. And thank you to Telestrations for the sketchbooks. Not sponsored. Not that they sent them to. I just have. Yeah. You know who should sponsor this podcast? A board game.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

Ah, I see it. All right. Thanks for playing, Greg. At the end of the day, Greg, what is more important? Beating the ATS, designing a resume that's going to get through and correctly apply everything in the right spots in the ATS system, or designing a template that a human is going to read and inevitably look through.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

I don't think you have to decide. Like, it's not hard to build a template that is ATS friendly and is a very professional, easy to follow, and has enough space to convey all your professional branding, your key skills, your title, your maybe a career highlights, professional summary, and then all your great experience. Like all the templates on our website, ATS optimized, but made for a hiring manager to see how great you are.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

So if you're designing a template, so you have to think of both, then is what you're saying. You can't design a template that is so optimized for ATS that it's just going to populate, but it looks like code.

SPEAKER_00 16:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Because that once the hiring manager opens it, that's not how a human looks at a resume. And they're going to say, ah, no. There's no personality.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

There's no like if you're too scared of an like just ATS friendly, you're going to have this very plain, ugly document which says to the hiring manager, I'm not going to go above and beyond. It's like my favorite analogy: uh, an ugly resume template is like showing up to a job interview in your pajamas. Like, it knows it doesn't affect your ability to do the job, but yes, it presents someone who is unprofessional, not willing to try hard, and probably doesn't understand the like social and professional conventions of the space they're going to be working in.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

So you're saying, again, to recap, one is not more important than the other.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

No. So two resumes are on screen. One is one is nicely formatted, one isn't, but the one that isn't is a more skilled person. So I'm gonna pop up with both of the resumes on screen, and I'm gonna say, um, this person pointing at the uh the the less like nicely designed resume, this person is more qualified than this person, point at the other one. But this person, the one who's less qualified, is going to get hired, and here's why. Oh right, it's contrarian, it but it will teach a very important lesson. I can't wait to see it. And if you're listening to this podcast, if you already saw this video, I hope it was a success.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Yeah, I hope it will be a great video.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Uh yeah, I'm sure it will.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

I'm sure. How do you feel when you hear people blame ATS for not getting through? Sad.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

Sad. Tell me more. Well, here's the thing: you will never find out that it was ATS that blocked you from getting through. So these people are looking for a scapegoat. Because if it's not ATS's fault, whose fault is it? My fault. It's your fault, Jeff. It probably is my fault. Not Jeff specifically, but you know, it's all our fault. If if we if it's not ATS, we have to look at ourselves. Yeah. And when people say, I'm just not getting through the ATS, we are not then thinking critically about how to improve our resume. We're not thinking, oh, maybe my bullet points aren't very impressive. Or worse, maybe I haven't been very good at my work, so I don't have enough to brag about. That is the mindset I'm trying to drive home. We talked about it last week.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Like, you want your the onus to be on you. You want to feel some accountability so you can improve. Obviously, I don't want people getting too down on themselves, but at the same time, to move forward, it's nice to just look at how we can improve.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

It is now time for my favorite segment: Unusual interviews, where we ask each other questions that we hope you never get asked in an interview. If childhood, Greg, was given a shopping spree at the mall, what store would you run to first?

SPEAKER_00 19:44

Um what is now called GameStop, probably, which was at one time EB Games. EB Games. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Get that 2K.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Yes. Yes. Or EA Sports or whatever. But also, I was like, as you know, pretty big into just Nintendo 64 in general at the time. So probably would have, yeah, would have rated the all the games there.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Yeah. Get the NFL Blitz. Yeah. Get destroyed by Jeff again.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

I beat you every time.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

I got destroyed.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

He thought he could beat me. I practice. Jeff. Alright. Alright. I wanted to know similar childhood related question. Childhood Jeff is the best. I'm excited to hear.

SPEAKER_01 20:33

Yeah, he's the same as he is now.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Great. Not surprised. What is or was your favorite like game within the realm of like non-video games but non-board games? So like tabletop. We're talking like foosball, pool, ping pong, darts, like that world.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Uh I love to play pool and ping pong.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Yeah. We've we had a couple of like a pool table at home. We had a ping pong table at home growing up. Um we were a bit of a board game family. So like, yeah, we we played some games. I wouldn't say like a lot of tabletop besides pool. We were very sports. Yeah. Like basketball in the front yard. Yeah. Like we have a nice hoop.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Play catch on the hostas.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Play catch on the hostas. Yeah. That's the you gotta dribble through the hostas, get that layup. Uh yeah. I would say tabletop, definitely I'm a I like I like pool. I still enjoy nice. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Next Job Now. If you enjoyed our episode, please like, subscribe, send to a friend, give us a review. We love doing these episodes and we love having you listen. Don't forget to grab free resources off of Greg's website, greglangstaff.com. Join us next week when we talk about how to properly brand your resumes and what skills you should be. including. We'll see you then.