Re:Ask HN: Best resume format for auto-fill online job apps?
by wtracy on Friday August 12, 2016 @04:32PM
(#12278585)
I agree 100 percent that recruiters prefer Word docs because they're easier to tamper with. (A recruiter once asked me over the phone if I had my resume in a format other than PDF, then said it was okay because he had a way to edit it anyway!)
That said,
> word formats are pretty unamenable to parsing
Compared to what? Almost all resumes show up in .doc or .pdf format. Maybe the occasional snowflake will submit an HTML file, a WordPerfect document, or a .swf file.
Candidates submitting raw text (or something like JSON) are going to be few and far between. (Although RTF is actually straight text under the hood, and I'm surprised I don't see it mentioned more often.)
That said,
> word formats are pretty unamenable to parsing
Compared to what? Almost all resumes show up in .doc or .pdf format. Maybe the occasional snowflake will submit an HTML file, a WordPerfect document, or a .swf file.
Candidates submitting raw text (or something like JSON) are going to be few and far between. (Although RTF is actually straight text under the hood, and I'm surprised I don't see it mentioned more often.)