Scannable Résumés

Many employers now scan résumés received via mail, electronic mail, or fax into their own searchable databases, for use by their hiring managers. Many recruiters offer private résumé libraries to their clients. Unfortunately, typical paper résumés usually have defects that limit their success in electronic form. Serious consideration should be given to modifying your résumé to make it more scanner-friendly, or creating a second version of your résumé specifically for scanning. Although there are many different scanning systems, there are two groups of common issues: formatting and keywords.
 

Formatting

Scanners use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to translate printed résumés into electronic versions. Unfortunately, care must be taken with paper résumés to avoid confusing the scanners.

Paper

• Use letter-sized paper (8.5 inches by 11 inches).
  
  
• Make sure there is high color contrast between the printing and paper; black text on white, off-white, or ivory paper is best.
  
  
• Do not use thick paper or paper with decorative designs.
  
  
• Print on one side only.

Printing

• The print quality must be sharp; use a laser printer, not a dot-matrix printer or typewriter. If you do not have access to a laser printer, many copy shops can print for you if you bring in the word processor file on a disk or e-mail it to them.
  
  
• Use a 12-point font size. Avoid other font sizes.
  
  
• Use clean, simple fonts like Times Roman or Helvetica. Avoid other fonts.
  
  
• Do not use boldface, italics, underlining, shading, horizontal or vertical lines, boxes, borders, graphics, or handwriting.
  
  
• Do not use (parentheses), [brackets] or slashes (/); use dashes with telephone numbers: 123-456-7890.
  
  
• Use asterisks (*) instead of bullets.
  
  
• Do not force characters to be printed closer together (horizontally) than normal.
  
  
• Do not force lines to be printed closer together (vertically) than normal.
  
  
  
  

Layout

• Try to limit your résumé to one or two pages, unless you have ten or more years of full-time experience.
  
  
• Your name, by itself, should be the very first line on each page of the résumé. Do not use descriptors like, "Name: John Doe." Do not put your name and address on the same line.
  
  
• Your address and telephone number should be below your name at the top of the first page, with information on separate lines. Example:
  
  John Doe
  10 Main Street
  Anywhere CA  12345-6789
  123-456-7890
  
  
• Text should be placed flush-left, not centered.
  
  
• Use a whole-line format instead of columns. Scanners read lines across the whole page from left to right and do not notice columns. Gaps or lines between columns will be interpreted as a spaces between words.
  
  
• Avoid abbreviations and acronyms, except for common ones (BS, MBA, etc.) or ones used often in the environmental sector (EPA, UST, etc).
  
  
• Headings for sections in the résumé should be completely capitalized, since boldface, underlining, etc. are not allowed; for example: EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE, etc.

Delivery

• Avoid faxing your résumé. Next-day shipping may be an alternative, if a deadline is at hand. If you must fax a résumé, set the fax machine on fine/high-resolution mode, rather than standard mode; however, the recipent's fax machine may not have this capability.
  
  
• Always send original prints, not photocopies.
  
  
• Do not fold résumés because creases may obscure some of the text. Always mail résumés in large, flat, 9-inch by 12-inch envelopes.
  
  
• Use paper clips instead of staples. Staples (or their holes) may obscure text or cause pages to stick together.
  
  
• If you send two or more versions of your résumé (i.e., a regular version and a scannable version) to an employer, attach a removeable note to each one indicating what version it is.