Is Your Beautifully Formatted Resume Causing ATSs To Screen You Out?

Unless you're a Graphic Designer, do you think your ability to create a beautifully formatted document is important to employers?

If your job isn't to create beautifully formatted documents (like a Graphic Designer), will that beautiful resume design matter to hiring managers?

Will your beautiful format get you more interviews? Help you advance in the hiring process? Get more offers?

Or will hiring managers care more about the content of your resume, where you've described how well you understand and have already solved the hiring manager's problems, created impact in the teams/departments/companies you've worked for, and that the hiring manager can trust you?

In reality, that beautiful format on your resume is a distraction to the hiring manager, away from the content of your resume (what they really care about).

"Fancy" formatting does present the side benefit of a high chance that your beautiful formatting will be ATS unfriendly, causing delays for translation, or errors loading it into the ATS. In effect, that beautiful formatting can be the reason your resume is screened out, due to incompatibility between the employer's ATS and your formatting choices.

So why do professional resume writers, most career coaches and outplacement firms include this beautiful formatting on the resumes they produce for clients?

Because it brands the resumes they produce, seen by their clients (you, the job seeker) as "special" and unique, justifying their fees, and making their resumes appear to be more valuable. In reality, that beautiful formatting distracts hiring managers from how successfully you can do the job, and greatly increases the chances the formatting will cause ATSs to screen you out of consideration.

So why do you care about how beautifully formatted your resume is, when there are far more effective strategies to get your resume through and around Applicant Tracking Systems?

I help people solve the most difficult job search problems, including job search acceleration, getting past ATSs, ageism, remote positions, product/job function/career/industry/ geographic change, unemployment, "bouncy" recent career path, job search turnaround, seeking raise/promotion, industry in decline/consolidation, long term gaps, family leave, or other of the most challenging job search issues.

Join me for my next free Resume Webinar (enroll at https://x.resumewebinar.com/register for no charge) and learn how to accelerate your job search, so you can find your next job faster in 2023.

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