PDF Resume

A resume exported as a PDF file. Always preferred over Word documents.

A PDF resume is a resume saved in Portable Document Format — the standard file type for sharing resumes in 2026. PDFs preserve your formatting perfectly across devices and operating systems, unlike Word documents, which render differently depending on which version of which software opens them.

The old advice that ATS couldn't read PDFs is outdated. All modern ATS parse text-based PDFs correctly. The only time to use a Word document is when a specific application explicitly requires .docx — and even then, only if the system won't accept PDFs. Never submit an image file (JPG or PNG) of your resume; ATS can't read those at all.