Tried sending my resume as a plain text email instead of a PDF attachment

I read some random blog post about how ATS systems sometimes choke on PDFs and how recruiters get annoyed opening attachments on their phones. Thought it sounded like nonsense but figured I'd test it out for a job at a small marketing agency in Austin. I literally just pasted my resume into the email body with a short note. Got a callback within 4 hours, which never happens for me. Might have been a fluke or that specific company, but now I'm wondering if the attachment format actually matters or if I just got lucky. Anybody else try this and see a difference?

2 comments

2 Comments

nina_butler13h ago

Wait, has anyone considered that putting your resume in the email body might be forcing recruiters to actually read it instead of just skimming the file name? Like, when it's an attachment, they can just glance at the title and decide if it's worth opening, but with plain text they have to scroll through your whole work history before they can delete it. That extra few seconds of exposure might be what gets you past the initial "meh" filter. Plus, I bet some recruiters get suspicious when someone goes to all that trouble of formatting a plain text email, thinking maybe the candidate is trying to hide something or just doesn't know how to use computers properly. It's a weird little gamble that could backfire just as easily as it helps.

alice8081d ago

Stumbled onto this same thing a while back. It's not just about ATS systems, a lot of recruiters I've talked to say they hate opening attachments on their phones because it takes too long. So yeah, plain text email is pretty much a cheat code for getting noticed faster I think.