Resume File Format
PDF unless you are told otherwise. It preserves the layout on every machine, cannot be edited accidentally, and modern parsers read text-based PDFs without difficulty.
The exceptions are worth knowing, and so is the small set of export and naming decisions that determine whether the file survives contact with an applicant tracking system — which is where more applications fail than on content.
PDF against Word
Send Word when a recruitment agency asks for it, which usually means a recruiter intends to strip your contact details and add their own branding before forwarding you to a client. That is normal agency practice rather than a warning sign.
| Word (.docx) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Layout stability | Identical everywhere | Shifts by machine and version |
| Parsing | Fine, if text-based | Fine |
| Editable by recipient | No | Yes — sometimes the point |
| Metadata exposure | Some | More, incl. edit history |
| Default choice | Yes | When asked |
The PDF that cannot be read
A PDF exported as an image — scanned, or produced by a design tool that flattened the page — contains no extractable text. A parser gets nothing, and the application is frequently rejected as blank rather than as unsuitable.
The test takes five seconds: open the file and try to select a line of text with the cursor. If nothing highlights, it is an image and it will not parse.
The related failure is a PDF whose text is present but ordered wrongly, usually from a multi-column template. Copy the whole document and paste it into a plain text editor — what you see is roughly what the parser sees, and if it is interleaved nonsense, the layout needs changing rather than the file type.
Naming the file
This costs nothing and is noticed. A file named after you is easier to find again a week later, which is a small advantage at precisely the moment a shortlist is being assembled.
- `Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf` — the safe default.
- Add the role where you are applying to several at one employer: `Jane-Okafor-Resume-Operations-Analyst.pdf`.
- Never `resume.pdf` — a recruiter's downloads folder already contains forty of them.
- Never `resume-final-v3-USE-THIS.pdf`, which is read exactly as it looks.
- Avoid spaces; some systems mangle them. Hyphens are safe everywhere.
- Keep it under about fifty characters — long names get truncated in list views.
What is inside the file besides the resume
Both formats carry metadata. A PDF records the author name and the software used; a Word document can additionally retain edit history, comments and tracked changes if they were never accepted.
The practical risks are small but real: an author field showing a template purchased from somewhere, a document title from the file you copied it out of, or a comment left in from a friend who reviewed it.
Check the document properties before sending, and set the author field to your own name. In Word, run the document inspector to strip comments and revision history; exporting to PDF also drops most of it.
Fonts, images and what to leave out
Use a common font — the parser reads the text either way, but an unusual font can substitute badly when a human opens it and a substituted font reflows the page you carefully fitted.
Leave your photograph off. US convention is against it, it consumes space, it parses as nothing, and many employers actively prefer resumes without one for bias-reduction reasons. This differs from convention in several other countries, so it is worth stating explicitly.
Do not put contact details in a header or footer. Some parsers ignore those regions entirely, which produces a candidate record with no phone number — the single most expensive formatting mistake available.
Sending it
Attach the file rather than pasting the resume into the email body, unless asked. An attachment is what gets forwarded and filed; body text does not survive the journey.
Where a portal offers both an upload and a paste-in field, use both if allowed. The upload preserves the document; the paste-in guarantees the text is captured regardless of how the parse went.
Send a copy to yourself and open it on a phone before applying anywhere. A layout that breaks on a small screen is common, and phones are where a large share of first reads now happen.
Keep the file size sensible while you are at it. A resume carrying an embedded high-resolution image can run to several megabytes, which some portals reject outright and some email systems quietly strip. A text-only document is typically well under a megabyte, and anything much above that usually means an image is doing work that words should be doing.
Frequently asked questions
PDF by default — it preserves the layout everywhere and modern parsers read text-based PDFs fine. Send Word when an agency asks, which usually means a recruiter intends to rebrand it before forwarding you to a client.
Text-based ones, yes. An image-based PDF — scanned, or flattened by a design tool — contains no extractable text and often gets rejected as blank. Try selecting a line of text; if nothing highlights, it will not parse.
`Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf`, with the role appended if you are applying to several at one employer. Never `resume.pdf` — a recruiter's downloads folder already has forty.
No. US convention is against it, it consumes space, it parses as nothing, and many employers prefer resumes without one. This differs from practice in several other countries.