My resume got auto-rejected by a bot because I used the wrong font

Applied for a project manager job at a tech firm last Tuesday and got a rejection email within 3 hours. Found out from a friend who works there that their resume parser can't read fonts below 10pt and I used 9pt to fit everything on one page. Any tips for making resumes that actually get past those ATS systems without sacrificing important details?

2 comments

2 Comments

kelly.daniel1mo ago

Used 9pt to fit everything on one page" - been there. My last resume got rejected and I'm pretty sure it was because I used Comic Sans as a joke. ATS systems are picky little things. Stick to 10 or 11pt. Arial or Calibri. Nothing fancy. If you have to cut stuff to fit, cut the old jobs from 10 years ago. Nobody cares about your 2013 internship. Also save it as a .docx not a PDF. Some parsers just choke on PDFs. The system doesn't care about your clever formatting. It just wants text it can read. Save the fancy layouts for when a human sees it. I still say we need to unionize against these bots but that's a different fight.

mason_foster681mo ago

@kelly.daniel docx trick saved my resume too. Worked first try after that.