What Can Go Wrong When Submitting A Hard-copy
Resume
Here are some examples of what can happen when your resume cannot be read by OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
technology.
- Patterned paper
- Obscures parts of words or whole sections. OCR technology simply deletes what
it cannot read or attempts to substitute other letters or words.
- Double-sided resume
- Only one side of the resume is read and entered into the database.
- Resume that has been re-copied and/or faxed several times
- Words become blurred and letters start to run together. OCR technology
reads these as blocks of ink and may substitute characters such as * or # for
letters and words it cannot read.
- Font is too small
- Words appear as blocks of ink and will not be read properly into the database.
- Italics, underlining, boldface, shadows, reverse lettering
- Words appear as blocks of ink or unrecognizable characters and will not be read
properly into the database.
- Graphics, boxes, tables, vertical and/or horizontal lines on the resume
- OCR technology will attempt to translate these things into letters and words.
Extra characters will be added to the database on your resume that may not make sense.
- Two-column formatting
- OCR technology has not yet evolved to include proper tabbing formats.
When you list your skills in more than one column on your resume, the various
columns will run together in the database.
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