This one resume building mistake can cost you your job!

You’ve spent a lot of time and effort on resume building, and you’re certain that it accurately portrays you. You send it out and excitedly anticipate answers — but nothing comes back.

It’s possible that the issue isn’t with the content of your resume, but with the file format.

Every day, 10–20% of the resumes we get for consideration are not saved as Microsoft Word documents. This is the most common resumemistake we come across, and its career suicide!

The vast majority of folks who look at your resume online will do it as a Word document or a text file. (A text file is a document that has been stripped of any formatting; a Word document may be converted to text-only quickly.)

They won’t be able to open your resume if it’s in a different format, and unlike me, they won’t write and ask you to resend it as a Word file. Rolling their eyes and moving on to the next resume is all they’ll do. So, at all costs, avoid this typical resume mistake. Sending your resume as a jpg is not a good idea. Send it as a Word document instead of a Microsoft Works document. Please do not send it as a Pages document. It should not be sent as a Photoshop file. Create your resume in Microsoft Word and send it to employers as a.doc file. Please be aware that if you have Office 2007 installed on your computer, the default setting for document saving will use Microsoft’s new.docx format.

Because older versions of Word cannot accept this new file format, you must override this to ensure that everyone can open your resume. (What a brilliant idea from Microsoft!) Simply select ‘save as’ and then.doc from the drop-down menu of choices.

I Don’t Have Microsoft Word

Save your resume as an.rtf file if you don’t have Microsoft Word installed and can’t afford to buy it. RTF stands for rich text file, and if you save your resume in this format, it will open in Word.

The only thing to bear in mind while resume building is that fonts and formatting do not always translate well in this format, so keep it basic and use just Arial or Times New Roman, which are compatible with all platforms and software versions.

What About PDFs?

Everyone can open PDFs, right?

True. However, submitting your resume as a PDF is a terrible idea since many employers’ post resumes to an online database, which cannot read PDF files. So, while they’ll be able to open and read your resume when you send it, they won’t be able to add you to their database and search for you if a new opportunity presents itself.

Should I Just Stick to Plain Text?

When applying via email, I recommend preparing a plain text version of your resume and submitting it along with the Word version. This ensures that your resume may be stored and searched by any system used by the organisation. They can use the Word version if they like. They can utilise the text-only file if their system doesn’t support Word versions.

Simply choose ‘plain text –.txt’ from the ‘save as’ menu in Microsoft Word to produce a text-only version of your resume. Once your resume has been saved as a text file, examine it and make any necessary changes to the formatting. Remember that you can’t use any menu commands when working in text mode, but you may use anything on your keyboard. As an example, you may use asterisks instead of bullet points, or use dashes to highlight a key portion of text, or create gaps between sections.

Sending your resume in.doc and.txt formats, if you haven’t already, will immediately enhance your response rate by assuring that every receiver can open, read, and save your resume.

Still confused? Seek guidance form the best resume writing services Toronto today!