The popular 'white-fonting' résumé hack can actually hurt your chances of getting an interview, experts warn
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- To "white-font" or not to? That's a question some job candidates should consider when preparing their résumés.
- It's the practice of pasting job-post text in white font onto your résumé to outsmart applicant tracking systems.
- But experts warn it can be risky and hurt your credibility and chances if you're caught.
Some job candidates consider it one of the most important parts of their résumé. But if they do it right, recruiters won't even see it.
Known as "white-fonting," the résumé trick entails copying large chunks of text from a job description and pasting them on your résumé. Part of the process is changing the text color to white to render it invisible and reducing the font size so it takes up as little room as possible to leave space for the actually legible parts of your résumé.
The thinking is that applicant tracking systems will then favor your résumé because it lists so many keywords from the job post, upping your chances of landing an interview.
However, experts in careers and recruiting told Business Insider the practice is risky.
Recruiters may catch on if, say, the spacing looks off, or if there's a lot of white space at the bottom of your résumé, said Toni Frana, lead career expert at résumé builder website Zety.
An applicant tracking system parses the text from your résumé, so a discrepancy between what's on the page and what the ATS shows would catch a recruiter's eye too.
They could also easily find out by selecting all of the text on the page, changing the background color of the document, or converting a PDF to Word, for example.
"Even if a candidate slips past the ATS filters, ultimately their résumé is going to land in the hands of a real hiring manager. If that person sees discrepancies between the words on the page and the so-called skills labeled in their ATS profile, they're going to notice," said Natalie Boren, senior vice president of recruitment firm Career Group Companies.
Instead of white-fonting, Frana and Boren advised that applicants aim to work relevant keywords into the professional summary on their résumé and elaborate on them in the bullets of the experience section.
"If a recruiter figures out you're white-fonting, it likely brings up some questions about ethics and whether you really have the ability to do the job," says Frana. "So while it might be tempting for some job seekers because it seems like it's a short cut, it really isn't worth it."