Scanner Friendly Resumes

Many of the old accepted rules about writing a good resume must be discarded when you are creating a resume which will be scanned into a company’s Human Resources database. You may want to create and send two different resumes:

  • One for the human reader and
  • One for the company’s scanner.

guidelines are for the scannable version of your resumes.

First, contact the company and ask whether they scan incoming resumes. If they do, send two copies-one to be read by a human being, one to be electronically read by the Resume Scanner Device. Make sure you identify which resume is for which purpose (attach a yellow Post-It). For a Resume the Scanner Likes

  • 1. Name only the top line. Address and phone numbers must be below your name in order to display information correctly.
  • 2. Use text only. No graphics, fancy borders, lines or rules, shading/screens.
  • 3. Use plain text. No italics, bolding, and/or underlining as these tend to make the letters run together when scanned.
  • 4. Choose a popular font such as Times, Palatino, Arial, Universal, Helvetica, or Bookman. The size should be 10-14 points.
  • 5. Use Job-specific key words. Industry terms, buzzwords; hard skills and commonly used trade terms are what the computer will look for. (If you do not know what those terns are for your desired job, find out. Informational interviewing is a very effective way to get that information.) Also include job titles, departments, key functions, relevant personality traits, computer hardware and software, programming languages, academic degrees, fields of study, foreign languages, all relevant to the target job.
  • 6. Print your scannable resume on a high-resolution laser printer on clean white paper.
  • 7. Send an original, not a photo copy. The cleaner the copy to be scanned, the better job the scanner will do.

Tip for those who already have a resume.

Transform your existing resume into a scanner friendly resume by applying suggestions 1-4 above to your current resume and then simply adding a Key words section - which is merely a collection of key words or phrases separated by a comma or period and topped with a Heading, "Key Words." You could put the Key Word Section at the bottom of your resume, or near the top. Remember that a computer, unlike a human reader, will not be turned off by a long resume, as long as everything is relevant to the target job.