A CV designed to look good on paper isn't always easy for software to read. Columns, text boxes and icons that a person skims past can scramble what an import pulls out. Ten minutes of tidying before you import saves an hour of fixing after.
The same things help with any system that reads CVs, including the application portals many employers use. A CV that imports cleanly into Rolebranch is usually one that those systems read well too.
What makes a CV hard to read
Import reads your file from top to bottom and sorts what it finds into sections: basics, experience, projects, education, skills and languages. Most problems come from layouts that break that reading order.
- A scanned PDF is a picture of each page. There's no text in it to read at all.
- Two columns can mix a skills list into the middle of a job, depending on how the file stores them.
- Text in headers, footers or text boxes is often stored apart from the body, so it can arrive out of place or not at all.
- Tables for layout split one role across several cells.
- Icons instead of words, like a phone symbol before a number, carry no text for a reader to use.
The ten-minute pass
Open the original document, not a PDF of it, and work through this list. Then export a fresh PDF, or import the DOCX directly.
- You can select and copy the text in the file. If you can’t, it’s a scan: export the CV again from Word, Google Docs or Pages.
- Each role has its own heading line: title, employer and dates together.
- Dates follow one format throughout, like “Mar 2021 – Jun 2024”.
- Sections have plain names: Experience, Education, Skills, Projects, Languages.
- Your name and contact details are in the body of the page, not only in the header.
- One column, no tables or text boxes, and no words that exist only as images or icons.
- The file is a PDF, DOCX or plain text, and no larger than 10 MB.
If you can select the text, a reader can read it.
Why dates and headings matter most
Dates and role headings are what turn a block of text into separate jobs. When each role starts with its title, employer and dates on one line, the import can tell where one job ends and the next begins. When a promotion at the same employer is written as one heading with two titles, or the dates sit at the bottom of a role, jobs can merge or split in the wrong places.
A consistent date format helps in the same way. "2021 – 2024" in one role and "since March '21" in another gives any reader two things to work out instead of one.
After the import
Import copies what's in your file and keeps your wording. It never adds a role, date or skill the file doesn't have. Before anything is saved, you see what it found in each section and what it didn't find, so you can discard an import that went wrong, fix the file and try again. Import is free, so trying twice costs nothing.
Import it and check what came in
Choose Import from file and drop in your PDF, DOCX or plain text file. Rolebranch reads it, shows each section it found and what it didn’t, and saves nothing until you do.
- Experience: 4 entries, newest firstFound
- Skills: 3 groupsFound
- Certificates and awards weren’t in the file: add them laterNot found
- Saved as your master CV, the old version kept in the historySaved
Free: 50 credits every month, plus 100 welcome credits that never expire.