Online Resume -- Word doc or PDF? (1 Viewer)

[SethH]

I'm in graduate school and looking at jobs and internships. Several of the companies ask for resumes to be uploaded to them via their website. I would prefer to upload a PDF as it will keep my intended formatting and not allow any changes to be made. However, I feel like MS Word is the "standard" and some people don't like PDF's (as noted in a recent thread here). I don't want to piss-off a potential employer by upsetting the "standard," but I also don't want him/her to open my resume and have it look like crap due to different settings in MS Word. Do you guys think it'd be OK to use PDF or would you stick with Word?

 

[DaveF]

Submit what is requested. I'm surprised a company would not specify a preference. (I'm also surprised they'd allow an arbitrary file to be uploaded.) My experience was that companies required a generic text format submitted, so all formatting was lost.

If no format recommendation is given, Acrobat, in my experience, would be just as good as Word. Acrobat is nearly ubiquitous. Acrobat files are commonly used by vendors for spec sheets, and as an alternative to Word and Powerpoint files by our business partners.

 

[Chris Lockwood]

PDF sounds like a good idea, but every time someone has asked me for a resume, they asked for Word.

The advantage of that is that the recruiter can add any required skills you "forgot" to list yourself.

 

[Mark Leiter]

I have most one the time Word is the standard to go by. The variance I have seen is some companies requesting a resume in txt file so that can easy input it into there resume cruching software that seems to be getting more and more popular.

For this reason I keep two version of my resume. One in Word and one as a TXT file.

 

[Francois Caron]

I'd send a Word file if none is specified. If a company can't even open a standard Word file regardless of the software used, what exactly are they using?!? Would you want to work for such a company?

 

[Ted Lee]

if you want absolute compatibility, send them a text format. every computer using windows has notepad right?

i would say word and acrobat are pretty ubiquitous as well.

i think most companies don't give a hoot about formatting anyway. they input the text file and then some program they have searches for text strings and flags the resume.

me? i have a word, pdf and text version.

 

[DonRoeber]

I keep two versions of my resume too. One to send to the recruiter, and one to compare with what the recruiter sent the place that I'm interviewing at. It's happened to me a few times that a recruiter has "padded" my resume with skills I didn't have. Not fun for both the interviewer and the interviewee.

 

[DaveF]

I do something similar. I keep a web page with my resume in HTML, Word and Acrobat formats. If I were job hunting, I would make a text version for submitting to corporate resume-mungers.

If I were interviewing someone, I'd rather receive an Acrobat resume. But I'm an engineer and I don't interview people, so take that with a grain of salt.