State of the Market

[eek]

I think you'll find that pdf simply get converted to word edited and then regenerated. No CV's get sent in without the agency "paraphernalia".

Only if the agent is bothered - at the moment that extra step could be enough for them to move to the next candidate.

[vwdan]

I think the ATS can deal with PDF these days, but its the agents who usually prefer Word format I understand.
Is it worth having your CV dumped by say 25% recruiers (or some other proportion of awkward sods) in the current market?

Agreed. The other year (back when times were still good!) I had a marked uptick in calls after uploading in .doc instead of .pdf.

I always recommend DOCX to people now - anything you do to make things even slightly more hard work for agents or clients can be detrimental - and it has basically no downsides for you.

[CosmicWave]

Agreed. The other year (back when times were still good!) I had a marked uptick in calls after uploading in .doc instead of .pdf.

I always recommend DOCX to people now - anything you do to make things even slightly more hard work for agents or clients can be detrimental - and it has basically no downsides for you.

Thanks, guys. I have uploaded the DOCX version now. I am not expecting any magic to happen... since the PDF used to work well so far until COVID hit.

My issue was that the word version (from which the PDF is generated) has all the data in nice text boxes & columns laid out etc. so if the agents carelessly hit some enter keys in them, the data may get overflown and not show up etc.
The PDF version once compiled to PDF, preserves that by freezing all that, and hence the layout or data won't be misaligned.

Anyway, the DOCX is now out there in the wild!

I am now actively on my Plan-B side projects slowly becoming main ones going forward, since I have lost all hopes with the contract market for the future.

[ladymuck]

Thanks, guys. I have uploaded the DOCX version now. I am not expecting any magic to happen... since the PDF used to work well so far until COVID hit.

My issue was that the word version (from which the PDF is generated) has all the data in nice text boxes & columns laid out etc. so if the agents carelessly hit some enter keys in them, the data may get overflown and not show up etc.
The PDF version once compiled to PDF, preserves that by freezing all that, and hence the layout or data won't be misaligned.

Anyway, the DOCX is now out there in the wild!

I am now actively on my Plan-B side projects slowly becoming main ones going forward, since I have lost all hopes with the contract market for the future.

There's a risk that if the agents did the transfer from PDF to Word badly it would have been even more messed up. I've seen some very interesting outcomes from that process!

[Old Greg]

Isn't there a trick with PDF where you put all the keywords in tiny white font behind the main text, or some such?

[baen]

I send out physical copies by post to get around automated scanners. Agents tend to appreciate this because it saves them the hassle of printing.

[ittony]

Really? String manipulation is extremely common in almost everything. Curious what kind of background you have if you didn't share that experience.

Well, there's string manipulation, and then there's find the longest palindromic substring in O(n) time string manipulation.

[_V_]

Well, there's string manipulation, and then there's find the longest palindromic substring in O(n) time string manipulation.

Come on man, was solved in 1975, where you been?

[hungry_hog]

But this is exactly how things used to be until March... at least in my experience.
Phone call, tech interview / discussions, and contract offered.
Never had to do all these online based tests, etc.

Anyway, just another thought - Has anybody tried uploading their CV to Jobserve et al. in PDF format rather than Word.
Does that help better or add value? or is Word format document still the king?
Just a random thought!

My CV has always been in PDF for a long time, and had no issues... well... until March at least.

that's a bit like saying - does it make a difference if you screw up a piece of paper before throwing in the bin

[ittony]

that's a bit like saying - does it make a difference if you screw up a piece of paper before throwing in the bin

Well, yes, that does make a big difference for your chances of it landing in the bin, so... what are you saying?