As the CEO of a fast-growing paid search agency that’s hiring regularly, many resumes land in my in-box each week. These are resumes at all levels: entry, mid, and senior folks.
One of my current hiring pet peeves is getting resumes in Office 2007 format. That is, we’re seeing an increasing number of inbound resumes coming in “.docx” format.
I can’t open these resumes with one click, so I am tossing them straight into the trash. Not even considered. Sorry, but true.
Now, I happen to have Vista and Office ’07 at home (ugh), but I do not have these at work. Our IT folks are holding our firm on XP and Office 2003 as long as we can hold out. On the OS side, Vista isn’t baked enough, our IT gurus believe. On the apps side, I fear the productivity hit of switching to Office 2007, when our amazing crew of power Excel users on our analyst staff suddenly won’t be able to find anything anymore. (Want to pull out your hair? Find pivot tables in Excel ’07. Or try to format several graphs in parallel. All the menus changed! Argh!)
Candidates: You know hiring managers are moving fast. Hiring managers are looking for reasons to cull your resume. If you want to be considered, make things easy for the hiring manager.
Sending your resume just in “.docx” comes off as rude to me. Seeing just a “.docx” resume makes me wonder if the candidate is clueless (because she/he doesn’t realize Office 2007 isn’t broadly adopted yet), not technically savvy (because she/he doesn’t understand file types), or self-absorbed (because she/he assumes that everyone should be using the latest-and-greatest out of Redmond, just like them). Actually, I don’t spend much time wondering, as I’ve already hit “delete” on the email and moved on.
My suggestion: Send your resume in multiple formats.
Plain text, in-line in the email below your sig, is always good. (I also like to see a resume well-presented in plain ascii – that suggests the candidate will be able to compose good-looking text emails.) A PDF attachment is also good -- it shows the candidate cares enough to control the page layout and typography. (Hint: if you use PDF, don’t PDF an ugly resume – ugh.) Use Word if you want, but be smart and use Word 2003 (“.doc”, not “.docx”). 2007 Word can read 2003 Word seamlessly, but not the reverse, so use 2003.
Just please avoid ".docx" as your sole resume format.
Landing your dream job requires executing lots of small details right. Choosing the wrong resume file format can derail the train before it even leaves the station.
Alan Rimm-Kaufman leads the Rimm-Kaufman Group, a paid search and web effectiveness agency located in Charlottesville Virginia. Find Alan online at http://www.rkgblog.com
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