Don't Use Calibri for Your Resume!
Don’t use Calibri for your résumé! Here’s why…
I have been applying to technical writing jobs for a few months now with suboptimal results. Since I started applying, I have:
- Refreshed my LinkedIn
- Updated my Linktree
- Read technical writing blogs (passo.uno is my favorite)
- Written an entire software documentation module
- Designed and co-edited a magazine
- Built this blog
One thing I haven’t done is optimize my résumé for Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS).
Thankfully, my résumé is already a single column – so no changes there!
But there is one big problem. When I ran a pdf of my résumé through my university’s AI-powered résumé checker from VMock, something very concerning happened…
The software flags spelling errors that aren’t actually there throughout my résumé! I think this website is very similar to ATS’s, so I suspect this issue may cause my résumé to be screened out.
I’ve also been editing and re-saving the same document for months now, so I took this chance to start from scratch. Here’s what I did:
- Created a blank Word document and set up all of my style formats first instead of making them up as I go.
- Typed my résumé completely from scratch – no copy-paste.
- Changed the body font from 12-point Calibri to 11-point Arial.
Here’s the result:
I’m pretty confident the font change made the most difference for this issue. However, it is possible that some invisible error in formatting was causing problems. I now also have a résumé document that will be much easier to edit.
So here’s the big lesson – don’t use Calibri for your résumé!
For functional documents like this, I usually don’t spend much time worrying about font beyond ensuring it is legible and widely compatible. However, in the era of AI, LLM’s, and ATS’s, there’s much more to consider…