Text Only Resumes
When you upload your resume to a website, it is processed by an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). To ensure that the server can process it accurately, you want to upload a "text only" version of your resume.
A "text only" resume has all of your experience and accomplishments information but has minimal formatting - because formatting confuses the ATS.
HOWEVER, you cannot omit all formatting because when your resume passes the ATS it is reviewed by a human - and humans need formatting to make sense of documents.
There are many resources available understanding how an ATS sees your resume, our favorites are JobScan and ResumeWorded.
IDOL Academy lesson, IDOL Academy workshop, IDOL Academy blog,
JobScan article, Resume Worded article, Resume Genius article,
What amount of formatting, and what specific formatting, is allowed varies for each ATS program. Here are some formatting that seem to be universally supported or not supported.
| Understood by most ATS | Not Understood by Most ATS |
| Standard bullets, i.e. a simple black dot | Non-standard bullets such as stars, diamonds or check boxes |
| Common fonts such as Times New Roman and Arial |
Unique fonts, "fancy" fonts, "creative" fonts |
| 10 or 12 point fonts | ATS don't usually care about font size, but when it gets to a human, they like 10-12 point fonts |
| Dates in the "MM/YYYY" format or "MonthName Year" format |
Year-only dates, these are often processed as January 1st |
| Exact keyword / keyword phrase matches | Abbreviations and keyword phrases with extra spaces between the words |
| Standard section headings including: "Work Experience", "Skills" and "Education" |
Other names/words for your sections. |
| Simple page layout & formatting, bold, italic and colored text |
Document headers and footers, columns, tables |
| Text in the body of the document | Special characters, text in boxes, information in images |
| The ATS does not really care about your document file names |
The ATS may show your document file name to the hiring manager - be careful including the company name in the file name |
| PDF, DOC or DOCx document formats | Other formats such as Google Docs or MS Publisher |
| Length or the number of pages are not an issue |
The ATS does not care how long, or how many pages, your resume is - but when it gets to a human, you still need it to be concise and relevant. |
Recommendations from Academy Members:
In general, you don't want to include anything that isn't specifically relevant to the position description. And personally, I advise against anything over two pages, as you'll lose any reader at that point - even when you have extensive experience. (Molly Parsons)