Spent 3 days fixing a stupid resume formatting issue

I spent last Tuesday trying to get my resume past automated filters and it took me forever. Turned out the job posting wanted a PDF but my file had extra hidden metadata from an old template. I finally figured it out after a coworker in HR told me about the file size check trick. Has anyone else wasted hours on something this dumb just to get an interview?

2 comments

2 Comments

joseph_murray813d agoMost Upvoted

That "extra hidden metadata" thing got me too, I spent an entire Saturday cleaning that junk out of my resume. I figured it was just my bad luck that the template my buddy sent me had seven years of his job history buried in the file properties. Nobody tells you that your resume can accidentally come with a free ghost coworker attached to it.

schmidt.grace13d ago

Wait, hold up - file size check trick? That's genius, why didn't I think of that? I spent a whole afternoon once because my resume had some random font that kept crashing the ATS system, turns out it was a font from a poster I made in college that somehow got embedded.