Automated Resume Formatting Whitepaper

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recruitingsolutionsProblem

with Resumes?save timeand money

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We proudly serve Recruiters and staffingagencies worldwide. Our products are builtfrom years of experience and through a desire to make recruiting easier.

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I. What is Resume Formatting for Recruiters?

The sheer enormity of companies, job applicants, and recruiters has made

it impossible for a one-size fits-all model for formatting resumes.

The task of formatting too often falls on the recruiter,

who then wastes valuable professional time performing manual

typesetting duties instead of connecting employees and employers

Resume formatting is a process in which a recruiter takes a job seeker’s resume and converts it to a client-presentable

format. This formatting is far from the most glamorous part of a recruiter’s job, but it is a necessary evil because when

it comes to formatting, no two resumes are the same.

We’ve all heard of the old adage about trying to fit the square peg into the round hole, but when it comes to job seekers

and companies seeking to fill positions, it’s more like an infinite number of shaped pegs trying to fit into the same number

of holes.

when recruiters are connecting job applicants to clients, a disparate amount of time is often spent

customizing the resume’s format or content to meet the specific needs of the client. recruiters have to

spend valuable time, as much as 40 minutes per resume, which could otherwise be used for communicating

with clients and job applicants, or used for business development. while outsourcing the responsibility to

a part-time employee or freelancer is a possibility, it is a cost sink that most recruiters aren’t interested

in taking on, necessitating an alternative solution, one that is utterly reliable, accurate, and efficient.

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1. The trouble with originality

Job seekers use all manner of templates, systems, designs, and formats to make their resumes to their own specifications of appeal,

while companies use a host of different means to gather the information. Some larger corporations have their own Enterprise

Applicant Tracking System (EATS) that allows job seekers or recruiters to input data directly, while others have software that

attempts to “populate” empty fields by parsing a job seeker’s resume.

Most clients and recruiters are very selective and specific on how they want job seekers’ resumes and information presented. It

thus falls to the recruiter to format and present this information just so in order to make the owners of those resumes into viable

candidates.

This can be a painstaking process, as at any given time, recruiters might have multiple similar positions to fill, but each resume for

each job has to be formatted for presentation. Thus, if a recruiter truly believes a candidate is a good fit for five different open

positions, he or she may very well be formatting said candidate’s resume for five different positions.

A good recruiter is first and foremost a people person, with the innate ability to solve human resources questions and provide

solutions to companies with needs that can be as immediate as that same day or as variant as sending someone to another continent

at the drop of a hat.

While most recruiters clearly have good writing and editing skills, the task of formatting resumes is something you would expect a

“Girl Friday” or specific employee to take care of. However, even an extra staff member isn’t a guarantee of solving the bottleneck.

Some periods of time will have just a few resumes needing attention, others will have dozens upon dozens. The time involved remains

a huge drain. In addition, the US and global job markets remain tight, even seven years after the worldwide financial collapse of

2008. Recruiters are better off spending their time doing the actual recruiting than formatting. The recruiting business is one of

the most competitive, not only among recruiters themselves, but also between recruiters and staffing agencies. Thus, every little

advantage possible should be taken, including the speed of getting each resume to the hiring manager as soon as possible.

2. Manual labor in a digital world


There are no shortage of job websites online these days, and many of the most successful ones allow job seekers to

store their resumes via the cloud for viewing, consumption, and download by potential recruiters or employers. The most

popular among these sites in the US at present are Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, Dice.com, and Indeed.com. Not only

are job seekers able to search open positions by keyword, location, industry, company name, etc., but they also can file

their own information for the purpose of quickly sending out a resume, cover letter, or both to prospective parties, and

update it when their work status or experience changes.

Recruiters get resumes from resume databases, online applications through career portals, job applications from job

postings on career job portals, as well as through referrals.

II. Where Does the Recruiter Find the Job Seeker’s Resume?

Between job markets, staffing agencies, emailed resumes, and online

classified ads, resumes come in all shapes and sizes from multiple

sources. Finding a cohesive, comprehensive way to deal with how to

quickly and efficiently source them from Point A to Point B is

paramount to a successful recruiter


Resume formatting has no set pattern

or chain of steps to be followed.

Every resume is different and every

client’s needs are different,

with an entire pantheon of different

possibilities that must be addressed,

everything from simple spelling, grammar,

and punctuation, to the removal of

images and tables, the repurposing of

information to more visible locations,

removal of watermarks, headers, and

footers, and the creation of

executive summaries

The recruiter will use every resource available to find suitable candidates for the position.

The recruiter makes a list of candidates that he or she will send on to the client for actual in-person interviews. At this

point, the recruiter will ask the job applicant for the latest version of their resume. Before that resume can be sent

on to the client, however, it has to be formatted into the required style to suit the client’s desires and to protect the

recruiter’s interests.

Speed is often the difference in the recruiter who scores repeat business with a company or group of companies, and the

recruiter who is always lagging behind. When companies post job listings through recruiters, they are looking for top

talent, but they are also looking for speedy solutions. With the job market as tight as it has been for most of the past

decade, the ability to deliver applicants to clients is paramount in being a successful recruiter.

III. The Recruitment Process


Microsoft Word-based resumes are the most commonly used formats and the easiest to edit. PDFs are usually not editable at all, and

have to be converted to Word or another word processor file type in order to make changes. This process is not always a clean one,

and unsightly extra characters and other errors can occur. Once these are cleaned up and corrected, they can be reverted to PDF

form, but again, the process is imperfect, and sometimes flaws occur in the new PDF as well.

1. Word vs. PDF vs. Online Resumes

Resume formatting is usually done using a word processor like Microsoft Word or one of its various similar competitors.

Other formats commonly used are online documents viewable as a web page, such as LinkedIn. Sites like these usually

offer the chance to download a person’s resume, but the result is not always the most visually appealing product.

IV. What is Involved In the Process of Resume Formatting?


For recruiters, the first thing to do in resume formatting is remove all of the job seeker’s personal information. This is

done to ensure that a company cannot contact the applicant directly, as per the agreement between the company and the

recruiter. No recruiter wants a company to be able to contact the job seeker directly, this cuts out the recruiter from

the project altogether. In its place, a recruiter will put his own company information: company name, website, logo, etc.

It is a given that the recruiter must make sure that all the grammar, spelling, and punctuation are perfect on a resume.

But the work doesn’t stop there. Often, job applicants will organize their credential into a table, which might be visually

appealing, but usually has to be trimmed and it is difficult to edit. Other resumes have a multitude of images in them. These

must almost always be removed before the resume is sent on to the client.

After that comes the actual standardization of the resume is done, including applying company/client standard fonts,

bullet styles, highlighting skills, removing headers and footers, adding water marks, etc. formatting based on the

client’s request. Here is our guide to resume formatting:

http://www.recruiteze.com/ireformat-guide-to-how-to-do-automated-resume-formatting/

2. Basic Resume Format Housekeeping

The sheer enormity of companies, job applicants,

and recruiters has made it impossible for a

one-size fits-all model for formatting resumes.

The task of formatting too often falls on the

recruiter, who then wastes valuable professional

time performing manual typesetting duties instead

of connecting employees and employers


3. Advanced Resume Formatting

The next part of the process involves streamlining the actual document. Job seekers often use fonts and bullets that they think are

the most eye-catching or visually appealing. What most applicants don’t realize is that if employers were handing out jobs based on

how pretty their resumes looked, all the fashion majors would be vice presidents and CEOs. Employers want to see information that

is easily consumable, not spruced up with emoticons and different colors

Oftentimes, the person who writes the resume does not grasp what the most information is for an employer. It’s thus up to the

recruiter to make sure the information is presented in the most professional, organized way possible, as to best sell the job

candidate’s strongest points to the hiring manager and relevant personnel.

A great way to do this is with an executive summary. This is a 4-6 sentence statement at the top of the resume defining the applicant’s

abilities and experience that is easily digestible by a human resources or hiring manager.

Depending on the client’s needs, there are several standard resume templates that can come into play here, which the recruiter

will need to be well-versed in, in order to satisfy the client’s wants in terms of how each resume is presented.

These include:

Vendor Management System (VMS) specific template: A VMS is a database receptacle located on inside a client’s career portal

that populates fields from a resume (with varying degrees of success). Resumes best suited for VMS use will have all bold and

highlighting formatting removed and will have just the employee’s name written at the top.

Summary template: An executive summary is a brief, 4-6 sentence summary of a job applicant’s professional experience for

the job. It touches on a skills required for the Job Requisition and appears at the top of the page.

Branded template: A recruiter or staffing agency can brand the resumes of applicants from its database by including

identifying information in the headers and footers of each page of a resume. This is very helpful to agencies or recruiters at

tempting to establish a relationship with clients as it brands those job applicants as part of the recruiter’s network and

presents their information in a professional way.

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Done manually, the process of formatting a job applicant’s resume takes a minimum of 20-40 minutes of a recruiter’s time.

So if a recruiter has five candidates short-listed for a job, he or she will spend at least 1-1/2 hours and possibly more

than 3 hours sitting in front of a computer screen adjusting a word document. If that process is repeated three times a

week, a recruiter is sinking between 5-9 hours out of a 40-hour work week neither talking to clients nor seeking out job

applicants.

2. The Time Drain of Manual Resume Formatting

# of Resumes to

Format

Minimum time

investment (min.)

Maximum time

investment (min.)

Minimum time

investment (hours)

Maximum time

investment (hours)

1 20 40 0.33 0.67

12 240 480 4 8

24 480 960 8 16

50 1,000 2,000 16.67 33.33

100 2,000 4,000 33.33 66.67

# 9

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When the Internet became the de facto place to look for work, sending newspaper classified sections to an early grave

in the process, many in the recruiting and staffing industries feared that their days were numbered as well, with job

seekers and companies now suddenly able to reach out to each other digitally, without the need for correspondences by

phone or traditional mail. What actually transpired has been a 180-degree turn from that doomsday scenario; recruiters

and staffing agencies are more vital than ever to both groups and the demand is only growing. For clients, the Internet

suddenly provided anyone with even a passing interest in their company to send in resumes, cover letters, portfolios,

and the like, whether there was a job opening that fit their skill set or not. This deluge crippled some companies at the

beginning of the Internet age, and saw them having to rethink their entire human resources strategy, just to stay ahead

of the onslaught. For job applicants, the resurgent need for staffing agencies came later, as spammers and scam artists

began to infiltrate job boards, promising big salaries and exceptional benefits on false ads, all in the pursuit of stealing

people’s personal information on the Internet. Weeding out the real job ads from the fake ones can be a chore for job

applicants, and recruiting and staffing agencies offer guaranteed, verified job openings on their websites and via emailed

lists.

According to website Recruiting Blogs, in 2013, the global staffing market was worth $413 billion. Of that, the US

staffing market was worth $124 billion, 30% of the global market share.

According to the American Staffing Association, in the average week, more than 3 million temporary and contract

employees are working for American staffing companies, and over the course of a full year, that number swells to

14 million - that’s more than the population of Illinois.

US consulting group Staffing Industry Analysts predicts that the recruiting and staffing industry will grow by 6%

in 2015 and 5% in 2016.

A LinkedIn survey of worldwide recruiting leader’s reports that 75% of them believe recruiting hires will be on the

rise in 2015 and beyond.

A LinkedIn survey reports that 57% of North American CXOs, 55% of Asian CXOs, and 46% of European CXOs are pro

jecting an increase in overall staffing levels.

v. US and Global Recruiting Industry Growth

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$413 billion Value of global staffing market

$124 billion Value of US staffing market

30% US share of global staffing market

6% Estimated growth of US recruiting/staffing industry in 2015

5% Estimated growth of US recruiting/staffing industry in 2016

3 million Number of US staffing company employees in any given week

14 millionNumber of US staffing company employees over the course

of a year

75% Percentage of worldwide recruiting leaders who believe

recruiting hires are on the rise.

The recruiting business is booming,

not just in the US, but across the entire

world, as more and more companies and

corporations seek to find quality

employees through third parties, as

well as hiring freelancers and

temporary workers to satisfy specific

job needs. Recruiters who seek to

remain competitive in today’s market

need advantages to set them apart

from the competition


Automated Resume Formatting is exactly what the name suggests, using automation to format resumes. It can be done

using existing resume templates, by uploading resumes that then populate fields, or by highlighting key information on a

resume. The software solution handles the rest, resulting in several key positive outcomes:

Saves time for the recruiter, who literally lives by the credo that time is money.

Allows recruiters the ability to spend more time interacting with clients and customers, thus building his or her

business, rather than using that time performing formatting duties which is a manual, menial task that lends

nothing to one’s professional or business development.

Enhances the speed of delivering the polished resume to the client. Once a candidate is short-listed and made

aware that their latest resume is desired by a company, they no longer have to format it to fit an individual

client’s needs nor wait for someone else to do it.

This speed is pivotal in that often times the first resume to reach a hiring manager that presents a good candidate

has the best chance of getting hired. Recruiting managers seldom use a ‘wait and see’ strategy, and are usually ag

gressive when it comes to selecting candidates for interviews, meetings with executives, and pulling the trigger on

who to hire. The speed increase can also mean building a stronger bond with companies and hiring managers, which

means more revenue, more repeat business, and more profitability.

VI. What is Automated Resume Formatting?


When companies invest in a recruitment service to fill open spots, they aren’t in the business of wasting time. Decisions

being made by personnel and human resource departments don’t start with someone saying, “Oh hey, maybe we should

think about hiring a new manager for that job opening up next April.” Instead, needs are addressed and processes start

quickly and fluidly to getting the right person in place.

Likewise, job applicants are always on the move, and when the job markets are booming, qualified applicants are in high

demand. If a highly-qualified person is on the market for work, they are going to receive multiple offers, and the quickest

moving recruiters and staffers are the ones who will likely get them placed with the right company first.

With speed such an integral part of the job placing process, the idea of spending hours a week manually formatting

resumes or paying someone else to do so is a tough pill for recruiters to follow. When clients employ a recruiter to find

talent for a job, they are eager to see short lists, candidate profiles, resumes, and the actual candidates, in short order,

and are seldom receptive to being told to wait patiently. Having an automated system that can eliminate this huge time

sink could be paramount to the success or failure of a recruiter.

1. The Need for Speed

Automated resume formatting

turns the pain-staking task

over formatting a resume

over to a software solution


Using an automated resume formatting solution is a smart choice for nearly every recruiter, but there are specific industries in

which it can be a life-saver based on what they do and the volume of resumes they see in a fairly short amount of time.

Staffing Industry: As previously discussed, they are always working with candidates and clients and have to send candidate

resumes to the client to start the process of scheduling and conducting interviews.

Outsourcing Industry: While it sometimes gets a bad rap, outsourcing allows companies to increase efficiency and cost

savings by hiring offshore talent. A bulk resume formatting tool would be optimal in this industry, as outsourcing companies

submit multiple candidates to the client for a project at one time.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) Industry: RPO companies are an extension of recruitment companies that assist in

tasks such as shortlisting candidates, searching databases, and actually building and maintaining the software and

processes used to house those databases, as well as performing resume formatting services for multiple clients.

2. Industries of Choice for Automated Resume Formatting

iReformat is a one-of-a-kind Word-compatible

automated resume formatting solution which allows

recruiters to not only format resumes for clients,

but do so in a host of pre-made and custom-built

templates and even email said resumes to clients all

in the same program in a matter of seconds


iReformat is Recruiteze’s automated resume formatting solution which allows recruiters to format candidate

resumes instantaneously to any specificationsusing resume templates, then send them to clients via an equally unlimited

number of email templates.

iReformat ‘s patent pending technology allows resumes to be formatted, added to a candidate database, or mailed to

a client in less than 30 seconds. It takes away the need for recruiters to spend their own time doing more important tasks

like business development and connecting more clients to job candidates.

VII. What is iReformat ?

iReformat is the only Resume Formatting Solution available in the Office App Store for Office 2013 SP1 and greater. It

is also available as an Add-In for older versions of Office. It is seamlessly integrated within Office, so that you can open

a resume, select a Resume Template, and the resume will be formatted and can be emailed from within Word.

It is the only available solution which allows Automated Resume Formatting within Word.

1. The Only Word-Compatible Product in the Industry


2. iReformat on Mobile Devices

3. Customizable templates for resumes and emailing

iReformat is the only automated resume formatting solution in the industry

available on mobile devices. The enormity of this advancement is not lost on

recruiters who know they can be meeting with clients about one job, use their

mobile devices to check for updates on another job, and instantly convert applicant

resumes into the appropriate format for a client with the push of a button, without

having to email the job applicant or return to the office for an afternoon of tabbing,

addition, and subtraction.

Not only does the application come with a number of pre-loaded resume and email templates, but it allows the user to create his or

her own, and save them for future use. The scope of this will particularly be welcomed by recruiters who do repeat business with

one company or corporation that demands every resume be put in the same format, one that is not used by any other company in the

recruiter’s database. With iReformat, the recruiter can create unlimited resume templates using the template designer available in

the iReformat Web Application. Pair that with the ability to create custom email templates for corresponding with clients, and it’s

easy to how quickly a recruiter can build his or her own brand in a quick amount of time. Clients will begin to expect the

professional emails and resumes being provided by the recruiter, and as matches are made and jobs are filled, that client will

inherently start sorting emails and resumes from the recruiter’s company to the front of the line every time a job comes open.


4. Fast, Flexible, and Consistent

iReformat’s three biggest strengths are arguably the biggest strengths most clients seek in both their recruiting service

and their eventual employees: Fast, Flexible, and Consistent.

Fast happens when iReformat performs tasks that take even the best recruiter 20-40 minutes of formatting time in 30 seconds. So

over the course of 100 resumes, a recruiter is saving as many as 65 hours of productivity, an astonishing amount of time to use on

professional or business development instead of indents and spell checks.

Flexible happens when recruiters are able to use iReformat’s base of resume and email templates to suit most clients’ needs. For

those who are a bit “outside the box”, they can create resume templates using the template designer provided in the web application.

As an added bonus, the finished documents can be saved as either text files, Word-compatible .docx files, or as PDFs.

Consistent happens each and every time a recruiter or staffing agency uses iReformat to perform an automated resume formatting

task. Consistency comes in the form of standard presentation of disparate resumes as well as in the client communication. Have the

same professionalism in both presentation and communication.

Above all else, iReformat is a lot like

a great employee - fast, flexible, and consistent.

It gets the job done quickly, precisely, and

with the ability to adapt to different

circumstances without missing a beat

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http://www.recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blogs/global-staffing-industry-sales-top-400-billion

https://americanstaffing.net/staffing-research-data/fact-sheets-analysis-staffing-industry-trends/staffing-indus-

try-statistics/#tab:tbs_nav_item_0

http://www.staffingindustry.com/Research-Publications/Research-Topics/North-America/U.S.-Staffing-Industry-Fore-

cast-April-2015-Update

http://talent.linkedin.com/blog/index.php/2014/11/the-global-trends-that-will-shape-recruiting-in-2015

http://www.slideshare.net/linkedin-talent-solutions/3-us-recruiting-trends-you-need-to-know


References


This whitepaper has been produced to share knowledge and insights regarding

the topic of “Automated Resume Formatting”.

The recipient acknowledges that these comments and projections reflect industry experience and assumptions by

iReformat LLC and the expert opinions we have interviewed or referenced, concerning the topic, which may

or may Not Prove correct.

iReformat LLC and its respective directors and officers expressly disclaim any liability, representations OR

Warranties express or implied contained in this whitepaper or any omissions from it.

This disclaimer extends to any other information whether written or not, provided at any time to a client,partner,

or member of the public by or on behalf ofiReformat LLC.

© 2015 iReformat LLC. All rights reserved.

All trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

Disclaimer



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wouldlike a demonstration of the iReformat product, please feel free to contact us using the

contact information below:

http://www.recruiteze.com/contact/

[email protected]

Automated Resume Formatting Whitepaper

Recruiting & HR

Transcript of Automated Resume Formatting Whitepaper