Compared 2 resume styles side by side, the simple one won

I spent 3 days tailoring a fancy two-column resume with icons and a skills bar for a data analyst job in Austin, then made a plain text version on a whim. The recruiter called back in 24 hours about the simple one and said the other got auto-rejected by their screening software. Anyone else find that ATS systems punish creative layouts worse than they help?

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rowan_butler9311d ago

Three days on that fancy version and it got auto-killed? That's brutal, man. I keep hearing about ATS systems being this picky, but that's a whole other level. You'd think all those design blogs lying about "creative resumes" would have warned people by now. My buddy did the same thing with a timeline layout for a project manager gig, and he never even got a rejection email, just silence. The whole recruiter calling you back in 24 hours thing proves the plain text wins every time, no contest. I'm honestly shocked the software is that strict, like it can't even read a two-column format without throwing up.