76 ms·

Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés?

• dClauzel 5y ago
  There is, thanks to the semantic web (the real web 3 :) ). See for example the FoaF ontology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOAF_(ontology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOAF_(ontology)
  • Waterluvian 5y ago
    Is the “semantic web” used in sensible, productive ways these days or does it remain an academic daydream? I’m highly skeptical of the whole concept and feel like I should have organically come across it by now.
    • lcrz 5y ago
      The EU is heavily investing in semantic data for education and digital identity, leaning on ontologies, RDF, json-ld and verifiable credentials. Banks, research institutes, universities are joined in large consortiums. The German hotel reservation example above is one of the projects that’s getting attention.
    • codingdave 5y ago
      Yeah, it is - not to the level people envisioned years ago where people made up their own tags and found a blend of XML and HTML, but it absolutely is in place for more meaningful HTML. We have tags that tell you the purpose of content - header, nav, section, article, footer, etc. Those tags are read by screen readers and other accessibility tools, and do bring semantic value to those readers.
      • simongray 5y ago
        Those things are semantic HTML elements, not the semantic web. The semantic web does have some HTML integration though, e.g. RDFa.
    • ognarb 5y ago
      There is some neat application for example many tickets/hotel reservation/restaurant do include them and this allow to make some email clients displays these tickets in a standard way. KDE Itinerary and Apple Wallet make use of this. For the KDE Itinerary part, you can read more on this here: https://volkerkrause.eu/ https://volkerkrause.eu/ (look at the KDE Itinerary posts)
    • simongray 5y ago
      If you get job where you need to merge graph data from a bunch of different sources, you will likely run into the semantic web stack. The semantic web stack is basically a bunch of technologies for building graph databases and sharing graph data across domains. It isn't some huge network of interlinked data sources like originally envisioned, but it is definitely not dead. I think the concept of graph databases is still something people are only beginning to discover the uses for. Most people only know of the initial XML serialisation of RDF and OWL which rightfully made people skeptical. Nowadays, the most common serialisation format is TURTLE which is basically just a subset of SPARQL and it is very readable. In fact, the underlying technologies are all quite mature (triplestore implementations and the RDF, SPARQL, OWL, etc. standards) and used heavily in certain domains, such as biology and language. The standards are designed for easy serialisation and interoperability which is the antithesis of the "modern" walled garden and/or commercial API approach of the big Internet companies, although they also use semantic web tech to a certain extent. In Europe, you will run into RDF quite often in academia (and research in general). I'm working on the newest version of the Danish WordNet, for example, which is published as RDF and OWL (in the turtle format) and which runs in Apache Jena. Coincidentally, I am actually developing this new version in Clojure which stole the triplestore concept from the semantic web stack and made it a mainstream database type in the Clojure ecosystem (Datomic, Datascript, Datahike, Datalevin, Asami).
  • Blikkentrekker 5y ago
    I do miss the glory days of when the W3C was still in control and had some very good ideas that browsers did not like. Some of these old AAA XHTML 1.1+RDFa websites were well engineered and a joy for both man and machine to behold.
• yepthatsreality 5y ago
  Please insert girder.
• AtlasBarfed 5y ago
  If companies wanted switching jobs or hiring to be streamlined and simple, they wouldn't do the job games they play.
• travisjungroth 5y ago
  I would have found it much more interesting and useful if the author had tried to sincerely answer or even ask the question of the title. Instead it’s just a complaint.
  • bee_rider 5y ago
    I guess the answer must be: Companies have no incentive to make it easy to apply to their job without manual intervention. Which makes sense -- if it were easy enough to apply to companies automatically, I guess some people would just write a script to apply to every company in their field, right?
    • quickthrower2 5y ago
      The underlying problem is you need a JSON format about the company. But the things candidates care for generally are easy to lie about (good culture, career progression, even remote working options), so scatter guns are required. As they say recruitment is broken - but its not easily fixable because it’s broken because of game theory and human behaviour.
    • ghaff 5y ago
      This is something of an issue with conference proposals as well. In fact, I've seen some conferences recently that put a strict limit on number of submittals. As a sometimes conference reviewer, I hate people throwing a bunch of overlapping and often generic stuff at the wall.
  • PeterisP 5y ago
    IMHO the author does answer the question without even noticing it. At the end of the post, "The larger employers and job-hosting web sites need to get their acts together and work this out". In a comment right below, the author says that this would be "giving job-seekers more control over their data". Obviously, the larger employees and job-hosting web sites have no interest in allowing job-seekers more control over their data, quite the opposite, so they won't. And their active cooperation is absolutely required for such a data format to be adopted - so it won't be, at least not in a way that satisfies the author's wish of gaining more control over their data. That's it, it's that simple.
• kzrdude 5y ago
  resumes are an adversarial game; the author and the reader have partly different goals. Does the author want the resume to be objectively judged? Maybe not
  • awb 5y ago
    Exactly. The goal is to stand out from the crowd, not be part of it.
• pestaa 5y ago
  I always liked the idea of Europass, but it's easy to understand why it didn't get traction. https://europa.eu/europass/en/create-europass-cv https://europa.eu/europass/en/create-europass-cv
• Daub 5y ago
  I am glad there is not. CVS give me an opportunity to review how effectively a candidate can write a document. Even those who use templates have plenty of room to screw up. For example, leaving an orphaned caption at the bottom of a page.
• WaitWaitWha 5y ago
  I do not want to be automated that much.
• boomer918 5y ago
  Let's make one. A universal format could help with bias and resume anxiety.
• ianai 5y ago
  I’m pretty sure PDFs are the universal for resumes or close to it. Don’t send a word doc though.
  • democracy 5y ago
    some agencies prefer DOCs so that they can edit it easily
    • PeterisP 5y ago
      Exactly, that's the very reason why you shouldn't send a word doc because it may turn out that the recipient is an agency like that.
• DamonHD 5y ago
  Could one use schema.org/Person to mark up HTML5 with appropriate microdata?
  • ivan_gammel 5y ago
    schema.org/Person is a terribly designed format, that I would not bring into new projects. Here are some of the reasons: 1. It lacks diversity (e.g. GenderType is incompatible with German laws, requiring "diverse" gender in official forms, which is definitely not "unisex" defined in the format). 2. It looks very much like a US-centric God Object. It is not clear why DUNS, ISICv4 or NAICS are there, but other identifiers like national ID or SSN are not. It would be better to have a single "identifiers" key-value map instead of them, that would be extensible. 3. Contacts would deserve a dedicated structure and key-value map (why single telephone field? why messenger IDs not there?).
• andy_ppp 5y ago
  I think the same thing about invoicing... especially given the different hoops every company makes you jump through to make your invoice compliant.
  • dqv 5y ago
    Don't they kind of do that at larger organizations with EDI? Or is it still nonstandard between organizations?
    • wolfgang42 5y ago
      EDI is only semi-standardized; in my experience usually each pair of trading partners requires a separate effort (usually the bigger partner imposes the requirement and the smaller one has to make changes). Some difficulties include: * There are multiple protocols for exchanging EDI documents (AS1, SMTP, FTPS, SFTP...) * There are multiple standards for the documents themselves (EDIFACT, X12, GS1 XML...) * There are partner-specific business rules that need to be set up (this partner needs an ASN, that partner requires invoices to be for only one PO each, the other partner can only accept invoices which use their ERP’s internal codes...) Some of these problems can be papered over with a “VAN” that can translate between standards, but I have yet to see one business send a non-PDF invoice to another without a lot of fuss.
      • zkanter 5y ago
        Good overview. I wrote about this in a bit more detail on our blog recently: https://www.stedi.com/blog/what-makes-edi-so-hard https://www.stedi.com/blog/what-makes-edi-so-hard
  • frabert 5y ago
    Italy actually has a standard for electronic invoicing, and most companies are required to use it ("Fattura Elettronica"). It works by having a centralized portal to which invoices are submitted. Of course, being a SERIOUS, CORPORATE standard it needs to be overly complex, based on XML and SOAP and WebServices and whatnot: https://www.agenziaentrate.gov.it/portale/documents/20143/2370834/Appendix+A+-+Technical+Specifications+vers+1.6_.pdf/70bf7952-150b-f164-6e5f-d066036a2129 https://www.agenziaentrate.gov.it/portale/documents/20143/23...
• nojito 5y ago
  Because a resume isn't a job application. It's a description of who/what you think you are.
• jbverschoor 5y ago
  .docx
  • vortico 5y ago
    Was going to say PDF but this is close enough :)
• heikkilevanto 5y ago
  Why should there be? Resumes have to be read by humans to judge if they match what is needed. Checking boxes and matching buzzwords only gets you so far.
  • threeseed 5y ago
    Resumes go through many systems i.e. job sites, recruiters, HR, hiring managers and are often poorly parsed by many of them. It's not like people are managing dozens/hundreds of candidates with a pen/paper. There is definitely a need for a standard format.
    • scollet 5y ago
      I think the most charitable and equitable function would be sorting and solving without filtering. It shouldn't take too long to parse the desirable skills from the top after that. Maybe this standard can match against desired/offered compensation brackets as well to get that sweet spot on the bell curve.
  • duxup 5y ago
    I think because some things like work history, education, they lend themselves to pretty standardized fields. And we have to keep filling them out by hand ...
    • PeterisP 5y ago
      On the other hand, when you get a bit experienced, you have to filter your resume instead of just submitting everything, and the filters are different for every company, showing the things that are most relevant. E.g. some internship or award or early ten years ago should be included if the topic is relevant for the role and left out otherwise; the six different positions you had during your tenure at a large company may be important in one application to illustrate that you have done a particular role as well, and a waste of space for another application. On the other hand, it makes all sense to have a standard "full" CV out of which to select the things to include.
  • 5y ago
• complexworld 5y ago
  I don't think it's used very much but there is this one http://xml.coverpages.org/HR-XML-ResumeSpecification200205.html http://xml.coverpages.org/HR-XML-ResumeSpecification200205.h... This page mentions a few more formats: http://microformats.org/wiki/resume-formats http://microformats.org/wiki/resume-formats It seems like the problem isn't a lack of standards, but rather a lack of adoption and/or agreement on which standard to follow
  • mro_name 5y ago
    15 standards and counting https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  I have had a lot of success with "September 2019 - September 2020." Seems to work fine in nearly every case.
  • ghaff 5y ago
    Note that there is some number of people who feel pretty strongly about obfuscating their age. I'm not sure what to feel about it personally but it's understandable.
    • democracy 5y ago
      I started getting better responses when reduced my work experience by 7 years ) It also let me remove some obsolete junk that interviewers never heard of ))
    • saratogacx 5y ago
      As one of the other replies has stated that trimming the older stuff from your resume can help. I took a variation on that by going into detail with jobs for the last 10 years or so and having a simple list of other places I've worked and what the job titles were. There's also a linkedin url which has the expanded version if the reader is interested in going back more but it let me keep my resume to a single page, single sided, summery of the "professional me".
• gregoryl 5y ago
  Parsing CVs is awful. We outsource this entire feature to Daxtra, who do a very average job (but, to be fair, better than anything we have time to write!).
• version_five 5y ago
  There are two separate things going on in the linked post. One is the absence of a standard format as identified. The second is that HR software generally is enterprise software sold to leadership where usability is an afterthought, and so it only gets minimal development focus on having a quality resume ingestion algorithm. So you get the terrible parsing the author complains about. I'm confident that if any buyer really prioritized this feature being better, it would be.
• CalRobert 5y ago
  There is! https://jsonresume.org/ https://jsonresume.org/ But nobody really uses it for data interchange. I use it to render my resume in new layouts now and then. Although, it does let style dictate content sometimes (some templates force you to have dates down to the day for job start and end dates, etc.)
  • spondyl 5y ago
    I used a JSON resume once and I like the idea. It didn't help when I had to apply for an unemployment benefit (while still trying to enter the industry) and they asked for my resume as a word document. As you can imagine, I felt like a clown trying to explain that I didn't have a word document because my resume was generated from a JSON file. I did, however, have a PDF on a USB drive I always kept on me but they refused to accept USBs out of fear that I was trying to give them a virus. Eventually the lady processing my application gave up and printed the PDF off that was hosted on my website but also scolded me for not having a word doc. The whole ordeal was pointless anyway since they said they can give me 70% of my rent.
    • ethbr0 5y ago
      tl;dr - HR is underfunded / under-resourced / un-aspirational. Even if there were a turn-key software platform they all used, which natively supported a standard data format, they'd still find a way to screw it up.
    • version_five 5y ago
      I have my resume in markdown so I can create a word/pdf/html etc. with pandoc. It would be possible to write something that parses a json resume into markdown so it could be trivially format shifted
    • Aeolun 5y ago
      My JSON resume is transformed to docx, and only latter to PDF for exactly this reason.
    • 1123581321 5y ago
      One of those pdf-to-docx online converters would’ve probably been good enough for this.
• stillicidious 5y ago
  Clearly written by an applicant rather than employer. Your resume is your chance to shine, use the opportunity or pay a service to do it for you. The reason the author is trapped long enough in meat grinder hiring to notice this "problem" is likely precisely because of some indistinguishable cookie cutter bullet point soup getting them nowhere. If you can capture it in a data structure, it's not a resume! See also: why isn't there a universal UI for web sites?
  • robertlagrant 5y ago
    > If you can capture it in a data structure, it's not a resume! Pretty sure a Word file is a data structure.
• kaderno 5y ago
  Nobody? https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
  • wintorez 5y ago
    CTRL+F
• JulianMorrison 5y ago
  Anti-competitive practise. If they make entering your resume suck, maybe you will only do it on one site (theirs).
  • thaumasiotes 5y ago
    I've been hearing people react to current (American) college admissions by saying the problem is the Common Application allowing people to apply to many schools at once. I would be more likely to locate the problem in increasing numbers of applicants rather than increasing numbers of applications per applicant, but I wouldn't be opposed to seeing a more centralized system go up. American medical schools accept students through such a centralized system. Chinese university admissions isn't centralized to the same degree as American medical schools, but it's still quite centralized, and more formalized.
• netcan 5y ago
  Hiring companies might prefer to just have this as a "hoop." There are, inevitably, some people who apply to a lot of jobs. Jobs they aren't qualified for. Low intent applications, where the applicant isn't really that interested. Etc. Even if these are a minority, they apply to a lot of jobs. In any case, standardizing job applications (OP seems to be talking about application forms that are mostly resume-ish fields) just means more of these. More volume, more noise, probably not many more successful hires. There's kind of the same dynamic on the other side. Most workers don't love the idea of submitting an indexable resume for employers to leaf through. Sometimes a modicum of friction is helpful.
  • version_five 5y ago
    They should ask for a cover letter. I agree that a hoop is needed - I recently posted a job on LinkedIn which has some kind of "click to apply" functionality, and it was clear that most of the applicants were just lazy clickers that probably hadn't even read the posting. On the other hand, if you make people jump through pointless procedural hoops, you're screening for people who are ok doing that. Ask for a cover letter, you get people who actually want the job and hear from them why they are interested.
    • netcan 5y ago
      A cover letter is a screen too. A cover letter is a kind of writing contest, or maybe it's perceived that way by a candidate. Writing about yourself can be stressful. I'm not saying not to, ask for a cover letter. Just saying that this stuff is nuanced. Standardisation is great when you want very low friction. Job applications aren't frictionless, probably can't/shouldn't be. Some copy paste fields might be inelegant, but it's not changing the friction equation by much.
    • jeroenhd 5y ago
      What's the point of a machine-compatible CV and a human-written cover letter? A human will need to sift through the same amount of information, except now they also need to read the long suck-up prose that you asked for. The honest truth about why they want the job for most people is that they provide what you need and that they enjoy things like eating, having a roof over their head, and fun things to do with what's left over of the money you pay them. Coming up with some drivel about how they've been entranced with Version_Five Inc's tech since they were twelve and how it's been their life-long dream to work with their famous Foobar Widget control language is a nice creative writing exercise but it hardly proves anything. If anything, it rewards lying and deceit to get hired quicker. Many very capable people suck at writing, even if they are truly driven and interested, especially in the computer science field. A cover letter is a great screen for a job that involves a lot of writing, but for most jobs writing is only a side activity that shouldn't be treated as the main objective.
• ardel95 5y ago
  Because humans are too complex to fit into schemas.
• FpUser 5y ago
  I very much like to write my resume the way I think represents me the best. The last think I need is to tailor it so some programmer who struggles with parsing. When hire I also like to receive custom resume that helps me to understand better why hire. Again I am totally uninterested tailoring my offering to formalized set of checkboxes concocted by some "industry expert".
• jeroenhd 5y ago
  In my opinion, there shouldn't be. Documents like these shouldn't be automatically processed, they should be reviewed by humans. Reducing someone's life history to a list of educational institutions and employers feels robotic even for a software developer's mindset. I understand that there are real life problems because companies do use automated processing on applications, but that kind of behaviour shouldn't be encouraged.
  • gingkoguy 5y ago
    Also having this it will give you the User to make 1 resume and apply to millions of jobs. It’s a win / win situation
    • selimthegrim 5y ago
      Unless you’re the employer being deluged
    • stemlord 5y ago
      There is maybe 1 in 50 jobs that I'd actually want, so I imagine bulk applying to would guarantee I land something awful.
      • lethologica 5y ago
        Not everyone has the luxury of choice though when it comes to employment.
    • drivingmenuts 5y ago
      Downside is when you have to make slight changes each time to better emphasize some aspect of your experience, depending on the job applied for. Recruiting agencies often do this to sex up their candidates chance of winning the job lottery.
  • ravenstine 5y ago
    I wonder if there's any advantage in using fonts and layout that are adversarial to automated resume processing, as in if something fails to scan then perhaps a human is more likely to actually look at it. But perhaps HR just throws those out.
• d--b 5y ago
  Well... Would you rather apply to a job by sending a pdf that you carefully crafted, or by sending your linkedin profile?
  • Kiro 5y ago
    LinkedIn profile for sure.
  • grayclhn 5y ago
    LinkedIn profile
  • scollet 5y ago
    PDF all the way. Gotta love the LaTeX.
• zxcvbn4038 5y ago
  HR people don’t like changing their procedures. I’ve done numerous interviews large corporations where the first part of the interview process involved copying my printed resume by hand onto sheets of paper so that someone could then type in what I had written into a web browser. Why they couldn’t just copy from my printed resume or accept soft copy in word or ascii I have no answers for. When I joined at Chase Manhattan it was very obvious that their onboarding process is designed for large groups - many dozens of people at a time - but the day I joined I was the only one being hired. I spent a couple hours with just myself and a single HR rep going through a half dozen rooms, in each room I had to sit as far back and to the left as possible whereas she sat at the front right of the room. She could not pass out forms until I was seated, at which point I would have to come get the form from her and return to the far side of the room to fill it out, then bring it back to her, return to my seat, then she would announce we were moving to the next room, and it would begin again. When I tried to sit at the front of the room she became extremely agitated and refused to continue until I returned to the back of the room, when I tried to get a form from her without first sitting in the back of the room same result. The rest of the company is pretty much the same, it never got better.
  • csmcg 5y ago
    That sounds like an incredibly unsettling experience.
    • democracy 5y ago
      It might be. On the other hand such a company is a dream come true if you want a stable paycheck, do piss-all and focus on your own projects instead. Just do your bare minimum and relax.
    • stjohnswarts 5y ago
      Not sure why it would be. Huge companies are bureaucracies and bureaucracies have procedures. The HR person was just following the procedure so she didn't get fired. You really can't blame her for that. I could see finding it frustrating but I don't think of it as strange or frightening.
  • 5y ago
• 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 5y ago
  Because individuality is as valuable a commodity in the workplace as elsewhere.
• Traster 5y ago
  If you really want a job at my company, and the level at which you decide "this isn't worth my time" is 2 minutes to enter your details then you weren't a good fit in the first place. There are genuine reasons to turn down stupid requests in interview (ridiculous coding tests) but "Re-enter all your details into this form" isn't that hard, and if you really think you want the job then it's a very small price to pay. What is does is force unqualified candidates to distill their lack of qualifications. So for the hiring company it let's them cut out that bottom 50% of applications (not candidates, applications) that are just absurd. If you standardize it all you're doing is giving the mass-application candidates a cheat sheet.
  • 16012022 5y ago
    Looks like your company praises doing useless, repetitive tasks. I’m pretty sure I do not want to apply there. Maybe if it was somewhere that actually prioritizes efficiency and meaningful work, you’d have a better way to do it.
  • edgyquant 5y ago
    Typing the same details a dozen times every time you change jobs is inefficient. That’s low end, people who aren’t engineers have to apply to way more than that.
  • PeterisP 5y ago
    The thing is that it's nowhere close to 2 minutes. Heck, it's optimistic even if you're straight out of college or if you're explicitly asking for just the most recent employment; but if your system is asking for everything and there's a few decades of data to enter in a weird form, you'd be lucky to do it in half an hour.
    • mcenedella 5y ago
      We’ve found the average time to apply to a corporate job post is 18 minutes.
• rospaya 5y ago
  I'm surprised nobody mentioned Europass. Personally, I'm not a fan precisely because it only shows raw info and doesn't leave anything for interpretation - it's cold and bureaucratic. But I understand why people love to us it. Around half of the CVs I see (in Europe) are in this format. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europass
• ashtonkem 5y ago
  It’s because the function of a resume is largely social signaling, not a matter-of-fact reporting of career history. You can’t make a data format to encode that information, which is why a lot of job platforms require a resume and a list of your past jobs in a form. Any solution for resumes is going to fall into the much harder category of social change, rather than technical solutions.
• renewiltord 5y ago
  I think that would be very cool. Coupled with a universal data-format for jobs, one could imagine a much better job match engine that doesn't rely on the right person finding the right job! Like a job market that matches employees to employers but in an open database. I can't think of an easy way to monetize it in an open data sense, sadly, but it seems like everyone would benefit from it and so you could charge a small fee and kill recruiters if your job match engine was good. The market being so lucrative, I imagine that someone has already tried it and the devil is in the details. Perhaps if I cared more about this and didn't have a great network, I might give it a shot. Could bootstrap off Github profiles or something, and be tech focused to start with.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• _jal 5y ago
  There is HRXML: https://workforce.com/news/what-hr-xml-means-and-why-youll-care https://workforce.com/news/what-hr-xml-means-and-why-youll-c... But I don't think anyone really cared.
  • Moto7451 5y ago
    Actually a lot of vendors care. In the past I’ve built Resume search engines using HRXML components. There are parsers, classifiers, viewers, search engines, and many other tools available for HRXML. It’s a fairly well thought out spec in my opinion. Most issues I’ve run into have been from individuals that hate any use of XML and hastily convert the data to an ad hoc JSON format without thinking about why the XML is formatted the way it is. I presume this issue is why they created HR-JSON as a companion for uses where JSON is preferable.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• jfengel 5y ago
  I used to work in ontologies, and what I learned is that people would rather get an 80% heuristic solution for dirty data rather than a 100% correct solution for data they have to clean. The big job sites have resume parsers that work well enough from a PDF or Word doc, and then they don't have to worry about you forgetting a close tag or a mandatory field. Sure, stuff gets lost, but they get 80% of a billion resumes rather than 100% of a million of them. They can't exchange data or even trust what they have, but it's good enough for them to make money. Meanwhile, a competitor demanding good data from its clients never gets off the ground. Anyway, every data format for human information ends up being either vague (to allow in everything) or impossible (see the myths that programmers believe about names, time, addresses, etc.) You end up giving a string for each field... Then give up, just accept any string, and hope for the best. Everybody wants Google or some machine learning solution because the formats never work for the information people want to convey. Better solutions could exist but the hacky ones are first to market, in a natural monopoly where there really only needs one good enough product. If you think a lack of a good resume format is bad, look at electronic health records. Those are far more important to be correct and exchangeable, and even there the cleanup effort is always enormous.
  • tomcat27 5y ago
    that still doesn't really explain why big companies have not initiated a RFC for resume format. they only have to come up with an RFC and just ask everyone to follow. The cost of producing such an RFC is so small. guaranteed reduction in inefficiencies including operational costs. my gut feeling is that 20% improvement could have big butterfly effects.
    • andylynch 5y ago
      They have - it's called HR-XML. It's mostly B2B but if you use EuroPass CV it's using this under the covers
    • jfengel 5y ago
      Because they don't want to commit to it. It would instantly become legacy and an increasing thorn in their sides. That was what I learned in ontologies: there is nothing so well understood and immutable that the business case won't change. It's so much easier to be vague than to be clear. I too was convinced that people would rather have good clean data that they could trust, and it would save them a ton of money in the long term while costing a little up front. Maybe someone out there can sell that idea, but it wasn't me.
• simonw 5y ago
  Because there's no demand for it. The vast majority of people who read and write resumes have no idea what an "open standard" is, and would be unable to create or read any resume that used such a format. They need the software to be built first. But the software won't be built unless there is demand for it.
• NKosmatos 5y ago
  Indeed there is a lack of a standard format for CVs, but this is the same for many other things in computing/IT/software in general. See the well known XKCD comic for standards [0] :-) I don’t know if it helps, but in EU we have a well known and familiar format for the Europass CV [1] allowing someone to create a CV and then store it in 29 languages and also download it in various formats (xml included). [0] https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ [1] https://europa.eu/europass/en/create-europass-cv https://europa.eu/europass/en/create-europass-cv
• jay_kyburz 5y ago
  I'm for it. The resume _is_ just data and the least interesting thing in an implication. The folio / work sample and the cover letter is the interesting part that will get you an interview.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• polote 5y ago
  There is one, it is just proprietary https://linkedin.com https://linkedin.com
  • tchanglington 5y ago
    This is super obvious and software developers who use open source tend to always think that open source software is the solution. Sometimes it’s an economics problem. Problems need incentives before they can be solved.
  • micromacrofoot 5y ago
    people are coming from the angle of “why do I have to fill out a webform and not just upload a standard file for ingestion” but in terms of how much of computing is experienced today, that’s starting to seem like an antiquated notion… how many people are using phones or tablets to apply for jobs? they’re not doing much file managing directly… linkedin is already supplanting resumes
  • mizzao 5y ago
    Yep. And it comes with network search too which your PDF resume does not have.
  • myaccoun90 5y ago
  • EmileSonneveld 5y ago
    I always put my LinkedIn profile in my Cv. Recruiters often use LinkedIn to manage their candidates anyway.
• jim-jim-jim 5y ago
  iirc there is a standard cv form in Japan. I never had to go through the job search in this manner, but a colleague said he just picked up a pack from a convenience store, filled them out, and sent them to every company.
• alberto7 5y ago
  That's like asking "Why isn't there a universal format for dating?"
• aaron695 5y ago
• nikkinana 5y ago
• dnndev 5y ago
  Will it make a difference? It’s broken either way. Most people tasked with looking at resumes are just guessing or heavily biased. Automating the process will favor those who know how to game the system. Linked in recommendations are a scam. There is no easy solution. I suggest agencies setup and optimize a way to get a lot of people in vet and get the people out that don’t work out. For most companies this is a world of pain because they are not setup for it. We hire folks as 1099, give them a few tasks and within a week or two know if they will work out. Not perfect but better than waiting 6mo.
• tonyaiken 5y ago
  That’s LinkedIn.
• DonHopkins 5y ago
  Because not all people seeking jobs know how to write XML or JSON.
• highwind 5y ago
  Because small to medium business that are not in tech doesn't care.
• thrwyoilarticle 5y ago
  There's not even a universal name for resume. Or consensus on the number of pages. Or on the content.
• mslate 5y ago
  Because not all "2 years of C++ experience" are created equal.
• amelius 5y ago
  And miss out on gems like this? https://pjreddie.com/static/Redmon%20Resume.pdf https://pjreddie.com/static/Redmon%20Resume.pdf
• jonnycomputer 5y ago
  One of the things I definitely liked about applying to smaller software shops is the ease of applying. I just sent then my resume, with an email. But anything big required endless customization to suit each's requirements, formats, etc. It was a damn pain in the bacon, and waste of time.
• jeffrogers 5y ago
  There have been attempts at this (e.g. the hResume microformat) and you can use schema.org schemas to build one up, but beyond picking up basic data like name, address, telephone number, etc... parsing resumes is challenging. People's experience doesn't always fit nice and neatly into the fields the schemas imagine and the incentive to game such systems also leads to irregular data.
• StreamBright 5y ago
  I would be glad if recruiters could differentiate between Java and Javascript.
• paultopia 5y ago
  At higher professional levels I think this is a bad idea. There's just too much variation in the kinds of things a resume might want to express. (Source: my own experience writing stupid amounts of code to get my academic CV into a CI pipeline on the web because no preexisting format for anything allowed me to express quite what I wanted)
• peterkouvaris 5y ago
  I worked on the problem of resume parsing for a year and a half. Pretrained language models helped us generate tons of Named Entity Recognition models that do a pretty decent job finding entities! This worked out pretty great for cities, names, businesses, universities. The real hard part is piping all the NERs to groupers that yield accurate groupings. Sometimes your NER misses a school but has a degree, related project descriptions and a graduation date. You have to re-run the NER on that area and make a best guess or give up. Lots of interesting applied NLP engineering problems there! I gave up though. If someone has more patience, I think this approach can really improve things.
• qwerty456127 5y ago
  Because résumés are subjective bullshit. Also, once you start engineering a data format for résumés you are going to feel like you want a UUID for every company, university, organizational unit and position. Then some sort of weight they have in valuation of a candidate experience. Then... My opinion is we don't need résumés at all. I mean they can probably be replaced with a 4-step process: an on-line choose-right test, then a test task, then an interview with an HR specialist who can evaluate the candidate's overall adequacy and then an interview with a specialist experienced in the actual job. I even suspect résumés are harmful.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• rcpt 5y ago
  LaTeX res.cls is basically the standard for anyone coming out of grad school
• bradknowles 5y ago
  There is a universal format. It’s called Microsoft Word, and the primary purpose is so that recruiters can take whatever you put in there and change it however they want, so that they can present this to all of their clients for the entire future of the world. If you didn’t want this, then you shouldn’t have a résumé.
• lr4444lr 5y ago
  The point of a resume is to stand out - not blend in with everyone else.
• bufordtwain 5y ago
  Also would be nice to have some sort of international standard/repository for a person's medical history, allergies, etc. I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets tired of filling in that several pages long list of the same information that every single doctor's office asks for when you go for medical care as a new patient in the USA.
• lemoncookiechip 5y ago
  I've been told in the past by people who's jobs were to review résumés, that the less your résumé stands out visually from others, the more likely were you passed up. This makes sense if you stop and think about it. These people spend hours looking at résumés that all look the same, with the same qualification a lot of time. Things like the font choice, the paper itself (recycled paper for example), the length (big isn't always better), the formatting choice, having subtle paper decorations... all of these small things can work in your favor if done in moderation. Obviously you need the qualification to go along with it, but if you're competing with someone who has the same qualification and you don't use platforms like Europass and edit everything yourself to stand from the crowd, well, your odds might just increase. Obviously take this with a grain of salt. I've heard it from two people, but that's not a large enough sample and not everyone is the same.
  • democracy 5y ago
    Maybe if it some designer CV yes, for programmers' cvs it is more sane to deal with the same format.
  • LAC-Tech 5y ago
    Noted. Next resume will have a black background with neon green monospace text.
• drcode 5y ago
  Thank you for sending us XYZ Corp your universal resume document! XYZ Corp is interested in learning more about you, so we are pleased to offer you the opportunity to now submit an XYZ Corp resume: Please follow [this link] for instructions on filling out the XYZ resume format correctly!
• gerdesj 5y ago
  Oooh, me, me, me Miss. <hand up, nearly bouncing off the ceiling> I partner in a firm these days (20 years) and in the past I was a permie and then a contractor (UK). 'résumé (henceforth "CV")' - I've seen a few and written one or two. I'm an IT sysadmin (time served) with an Engineering degree. My firm is an IT firm - not a cool one and rather small. There is a trade off between prose and detail. You need to get across your persona and your skills. Skills are more important in general, but some particular detail may score highly. A decent layout and formatting may score too (I used to teach DTP) - don't bother with handwritten unless your cursive is prettier than mine and instantly legible. When I'm faced with a waffle of CVs then I sort them into piles, most of which is a bin. It's tough, really tough and I do know what it is like on the other side too, so I do take pity occasionally, when I spot something that piques my interest on a CV that is probably doomed. So, my advice is (for IT): * Two sides max (duplex, so one sheet printed on both sides). Front side has pertinent detail and back side has extra stuff. You need to be brief. Even a pdf has "pages", but P1 should present you effectively. * Keep the schooling (pre college) bit very concise. Bear in mind that's confirmatory stuff and not so important but we are used to seeing your life in roughly timeline order so don't be too cute! * Describe your skills. Now this is hard to get right. I suggest you dump modern names of systems but not versions unless it is important. * Previous employment. Keep it very concise. I don't really care who they are but I might be interested in particular technologies. Now I've written the above, it's a bit more complicated than that ... ish. When you are on one side of a desk and some bloke who might pay you is on the other side, just remember that a contract is two sided. Make sure that when you agree to a contract (employment for example) that you are as happy to do so as the other side. Data format for CVs? RLY?
• LAC-Tech 5y ago
  Startup idea - make a data format for resumes. Make a data format to job postings. Automatically match them up, hiring can get pre-filtered resumes and hirees stop having to actively apply to jobs.
• dataspun 5y ago
  I used to write and maintain the code for resume and job parsing on an industry specific job board. A few thoughts: 1) the word resume can be spelled with zero, one or two accents, most commonly zero, and this fact alone seems apropos for the ridiculousness of submitting a document to a computer and hoping to get hired by a human 2) a resume is not the same as a CV 3) resume data interchange format is standardized once raw documents are parsed by sophisticated software — the problem is that most job boards and companies don’t reveal the parsed version or derived data including categorizations and ranking 4) most people assume, to their detriment, that they only need one resume 5) if you’re relying on resume submission to get you considered for a job, then you’re rolling the dice anyway and have nothing to complain about this ridiculous process 6) the most successful job searches will include networking prior to resume submission, or at least an understanding of how your resume parses in the target system 6) often the problem is with the job parse leading to junk matching of candidates — few if any recruiters/HR people would have any way of knowing this
• Jenk 5y ago
  I actually use the resume as yet another insight into the candidate. Did they send me a bland shopping receipt of skills and experiences or put some thought into the layout and visuals? Have they created a firehose of information that I will need to fight against to get the relevant information, or have they drafted some easy to read, but not too short, notes, etc?
  • gjvnq 5y ago
    How about having an XML file with all the stuff and a fancy PDF with the important stuff?
  • jonex 5y ago
    The candidate probably does not know that though, so they might be writing an exhaustive list in the belief that you want to see everything, or a very short list in the belief that you only want to get a quick overview and will ask detailed questions in interview. Obviously you get to choose what criteria you use for hiring, but I can't imagine you won't be putting quite some noise into the process if you think of the resume as a personality test rather than their attempt to present things in a way they believe companies want.
• hashimotonomora 5y ago
  Because part of the information is the representation of the resume itself.
• indymike 5y ago
  There are three different common standards: HR Open Standards Candidate, schema.org and JSON Resume. HROS (which does XML and JSON) is used as a data exchange format between enterprise ATS and HRIS it's very comprehensive and is very detailed (perhaps too detailed). Schema.org seems mostly like Google and friends just making something up (without even trying to work with other existing standards) and trying to get everyone to use it. JSON resume is about what it sounds like it is. Oh, and then there are various de facto standards where ATSes that work with job boards like Indeed or data vendors like People Data Labs... So there's a lot of standards. The problem is: a good standard is one everyone uses. Personal opinion: resumes are actually kind of hard. I've personally been involved in HR Open Standards and even though it is a very complete standard, it's still hard to map real world resumes into the format sometimes. There is a shocking amount of ambiguity, and a shocking amount of adjacent standards (some of those have been adopted) for describing work history, education, certifications, people and workplaces. So... most of the industry just parses resumes into some internal schema, and a lot of employers make job seekers enter their education and history on a job application form so they get it their way. It's really messy. Hope that helps.
  • FinalBriefing 5y ago
    Schema.org doesn't have anything for the resume side of things. They have a model for a job listing, so job listings can appear in search results with special formatting, but nothing for resumes. HR Open Standards is only available with membership. Doesn't appear very "open", but I'd assume that doesn't matter much to the industry. JSON Resume seems like the best take so far. I've used it for my resume and at my current job, and, although we've had to extend the schema, it's a great base to start with. It's got all the structured fields one would need to build a resume. It would be trivial for a company to start accepting it, at least as a way to pre-fill all the "education and history" fields that we have to fill out anyway.
    • indymike 5y ago
      Schema.org treats resume data as an extension of person. There's hasOccupation and role and alumniOf and organizationRole. It's not a "resume" it's a profile (old joke for job board people).
• madrox 5y ago
  The short answer is...there are many universal data formats for resumes [1]. Longer answer is that actually coming up with a universal data format that encompasses all the nuances of all fields that use resumes is actually HARD and no one wants to halt their hiring process long enough to solve that problem. Longest answer is that if you put your work history, education, and a title in a PDF, then you already are conforming to a universal data format...just not in the way you may be thinking, and data parsing is not the hardest problem in the hiring process. Until choosing candidates actually becomes automated, no one will care enough to do this. 1: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
• largbae 5y ago
  Why isn't there a universal data format for advertisements? Same question.
• _8j50 5y ago
  Can you name one universal data format that is so in practice?
• vanusa 5y ago
  Another factor people aren't mentioning -- even if such a format were to gain widespread adoption, along with the emergence of a side industry of Equifax-like companies that verify all the bullet points -- it would in effect amount to the backbone of a social credit system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System And as such, it should be rigorously boycotted, no matter what benefit it may bring to the drones in HR.
  • weare138 5y ago
    Wat? The article is just talking about automated software parsing different file formats. If you're worried about 'Equifax-like companies that verify all the bullet points' I'm sorry to inform you that's already happening. Not that I agree with this system but that's where we already are. People can't get jobs because the current zeitgeist in the industry is using algorithmic software to select candidates. The entire solution is just bad software built on a crap idea that has real world consequences. If we can't get something better at least having some standard format that we can feed this crap software it can actually parse is slightly less worse.
    • vanusa 5y ago
      [Regarding] 'Equifax-like companies that verify all the bullet points' I'm sorry to inform you that's already happening. Specifically? Yes there are obviously companies that strip mine every nugget of "data" they can possibly find about an individual, and then pass this along to whoever may be willing to buy, garbage-in, garbage-out style. But actually verifying that this information has anything to do with the real world (the way background check companies do) is a completely different, and very expensive endeavour.
      • mavhc 5y ago
        Shouldn't a universal Resume format also include digitally signed proof of your claims of degrees and certifications?
        • 5y ago
• equivocates 5y ago
  Because in certain fields, the design of the resume is just as important as the content of the resume.
• motohagiography 5y ago
  The question is based on a proufound misunderstanding. It's like a goalie saying people should standardize where they aim their penalty kicks.
• kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  Also, why isn’t there a universal format for job postings?
• tjbiddle 5y ago
  Résumés are boring. On the employer front: I always hated looking at 1000x pieces of white paper that all look the same. It was mind numbing. On the employee front: I always ensured I used very graphical resumes that stood out. They always got the attention of the hiring managers, and it was a great filter of either "You're boring so you threw my resume away" or "You're awesome and the kind of company I want to work for by having some fun with it".
• wombatmobile 5y ago
  > Why isn't there a universal data format for résumés? There can be. You can create a universal data format for résumés. You can make the universal data format a world standard in 7 steps: 1. Create a committee comprised of stakeholders. 2. Agree on a protocol for establishing consensus on requirements. 3. Consult all stakeholders about their requirements, and process these requirements through the committee in the form of a requirements document. 4. Develop a résumé format that meets the requirements through the committee. 5. Ratify and publish the résumé format standard through the committee. 6. Publicise the résumé standard. 7. Evangelise the résumé standard until it achieves widespread adoption. That's almost all there is to it. You just need money, time, expertise, charisma, luck, and for the stakeholders to want you to succeed.
  • smugglerFlynn 5y ago
    This is great! I would add one more important item to that list: - Find a common problem of these different stakeholders that will actually get solved by your new standard. Often, the standards talk is just a solution in search of a problem. It is easy to build a standard. It is not so easy to build a standard which really solves some stakeholder pain and gets adopted by multiple organizations.
• ab_io 5y ago
  There kind of is, it’s call HR-XML and a number of COTS resume parsers output their results in this format.
• celdon25 5y ago
  Something tells me that solving this would not help the OP's chances of landing a job. * "Why do people like JSON so much?" * No work history on LinkedIn except a <1 year contract in 2005 > "This got posted to Hacker News. I'm tempted to create an account and join the discussion, but I'm holding off for now because I've already got plenty of time-eating social venues to post on." So, never heard of HN before, then deciding that despite being unemployed and spending too much time on social media already, those other sites are still a more important use of time? > I've decided it's my job to whine, complain, and refuse to eat my vegetables until the employers start fixing the whole job-hunting process, because it really sucks. Maybe the problem lies with the OP's value metrics
• nunez 5y ago
  Given that so many recruiters are pulling data from LinkedIn, that kind-of _is_ becoming the de facto resume.
• snowwrestler 5y ago
  Isn’t the concept of the resume kind of outdated for most jobs? The typical advice is to write your resume as a series of impact stories. “Saved my company X% of costs by automating a key process.” Or “increased revenue by Y% by always showing up for my shifts on time” or whatever. But for many (most?) listed jobs [1], employers want competencies. They have a list of things that need to get done and they want people who can do those things quickly and cheaply. So if there is going to be a universal data format, I think it’s probably going to try to document competencies (which is what employers actually care about) and not the vague brag sheets that many resumes are. [1] By listed jobs I mean jobs you’ll find on a public job board like “front end developer” or “marketing manager.” As opposed to leadership positions or unlisted jobs which are more focused on impact and more likely to be filled by referral or recruiting.
• pronlover723 5y ago
  There is in Japan. I seems horrible to me. (not saying it couldn't be done better) https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%B1%A5%E6%AD%B4%E6%9B%B8&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=%E5%B1%A5%E6%AD%B4%E6%9B%B8&... You list your school info, job history (not what you did, just date, company, title), and have room for about 2 sentences of personal description. You also have to put your picture so you can be judged on appearance. Japan has some really nice features but treatment of employees, good salaries, good work culture, good hiring practices, are not among them
  • KTallguy 5y ago
    To add a little more detail, there are two general resumes you submit to companies in Japan, one is the condensed one that the parent google linked (Rirekisho). The other is a more detailed "Keirekisho" which can be many pages and allows you to go into a lot of detail about your previous work and why you want to join your prospective company: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%E7%B5%8C%E6%AD%B4%E6%9B%B8&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%E7%B5%8C%E6%AD%B4%E6%9B%B8&t=ffab... There is a bit of flexibility with these formats, but they're standard enough—and many teaching resources are available. Most Japanese university students are already using them to apply for companies in their final year. This contrasts with my time at a California university, where many of my peers had no idea how to write a resume even after graduating.
• booleandilemma 5y ago
  Because then you'll lose an opportunity to set yourself apart. See http://www.rleonardi.com/interactive-resume/ http://www.rleonardi.com/interactive-resume/, for example.
• mcenedella 5y ago
  I’ll start with my background, not for ego, but for context on what I know about why this remains a problem. I’ve written 3 Amazon Careers #1 Bestsellers on resume writing. A decade ago I ran the largest paid resume writing service in the country. I currently run Leet Resumes, the largest free professional writing service in the USA. My company did the famous eye tracking study showing that recruiters only spend 6 seconds on their initial screen of a resume. I’ve interviewed the CEOs and technical experts at the five largest resume parsing companies. And I regularly interview the CEOs of the ATSs. So I’ve thought about this a lot :) Properly understood, a resume is an advertisement to your future boss to get you interview requests for a job you can succeed in. Why isn’t there a single format to do this? At the core, the reason is a combination of personal expression and xkcd #927: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ We already know what is the most effective resume format for hiring managers. We’ve done the research, the focus groups, the AB tests, and longitudinal studies. The reverse chronological, one-column structure with black web standard fonts only, a single level of bullet points, and a simple professional summary and technology section, is, hands down, the most effective format. Google has studied it as well and came to the same conclusions: https://www.leetresumes.com/blog/what-google-recruiters-look-for-in-a-technical-resume https://www.leetresumes.com/blog/what-google-recruiters-look... Almost all of the top search results on Google vary from this format, however, because search results are based on what’s popular, not what’s effective. Psychologically, professionals have only one document in their lives to sum up their careers. Even though the true purpose of the resume is to get you interview requests for a job you can succeed in, professionals can’t help writing their resume to satisfy their own aesthetic or narrative goals, rather than the hiring manager’s. There’s a desire to express oneself on a resume in ways that are irrelevant, or often actually harmful, to the goal of getting hired. At Leet, when we launched on Hacker News last year, we had great conversations with many of you about why simplifying your format would be for the best. I recall one experienced engineer who had custom built something in LaTeX to automatically generate his resume as he incrementally updated it. I pointed out that ATSs were unable to read the document because of how it was encoded. Multiply that story times 90 million professionals, each of whom may bring just a few small extremely damaging customizations to the process, and you’ll see why a single standard hasn’t been adopted from the professional’s side. From the hiring manager’s side, standardizing a resume format has largely followed the xkcd story line. A company or coalition tries to introduce a standard, which varies from other best practices, and the end result is an additional competing standard. So the long answer is that standards would be excellent, except for the fact that users won’t adhere to them :). Happy to answer questions!
• smsm42 5y ago
  There are many ways to create such format, and quite easily - using RDF plus some suitable ontology, etc. In fact, DOAC ontology is meant exactly for that, and I am sure there are 3-4 alternative ones too, and making a process to parse it would be relatively trivial. Why it's not done? My guess it twofold. First, none of the resume sites is even remotely interested in data portability - they want you to use their site and their site alone. Why make it easier to go to the competitor? Second, despite all efforts, the usage of semantic web paradigms and all the automatic data processing that it enables is still minuscule outside of very niche communities - so most people aren't even aware of these solutions, and if nobody uses them, then nobody supports them, forming a vicious circle.
• petarb 5y ago
  I worked at a HR tech company and we used Sovern for resume parsing. It was pretty darn accurate https://www.sovren.com/products/parser/ https://www.sovren.com/products/parser/
• tokumei 5y ago
  It’s PDF, ideally with LaTeX.
  • ThinBold 5y ago
    Funny enough, the moderncv document class does not have a pdf document back when I was trying to use it to create my CV ~5 years ago. (It does now.)
• dathinab 5y ago
  there is one: PDF
• shp0ngle 5y ago
  well you have linkedin :P
• visarga 5y ago
  Why isn't there a universal data format for invoices, receipts, purchase orders and utility bills? It's because they are simple, so every Tom Dick and Harry think they can generate them with a bit of code. It's trivial one way, super hard the other way around, and the second pard is not their problem.
• petre 5y ago
  The last thing we need is more HR departments automatically scanning collected résumés and ML apps "reviewing" them.
• bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  because it's too easy to make a competing data format of your own because resumes are relatively easy to model. So if you don't like something in the universal data format just spin up your own, with the features or the serialization you want, put it up as a Show HN and get some initial momentum. It's not like making a data format for invoicing which even so has quite a large number of competing formats. Relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
• schipplock 5y ago
  there is Europass CV: https://europa.eu/europass/en/what-europass https://europa.eu/europass/en/what-europass
  • extraAccount 5y ago
    As an EU citizen I always used the Europass CV. So far no Employer, HR rep or even LinkedIn Recuriters ever told me to create my own version. I think they appriciate it because they know what to expect and makes a very good template. And making your own is more likely to go wrong than just using the template. It is very comprehensive and they have an online tool that lets you create it without having any Word document installed. Only downside is that it gets tricky to edit unless you use that online editor. You have to re-import it and edit it that way unless you want to play around with Microsoft Word. But the format is consistent and its easy to read.
  • andoli 5y ago
    I can confirm in the EU europass is widely adopted. I do not love it very much, but I appreciate the online tools to create/update them from XML descriptors, without having to mess with Word; on the other side, being a generic template, is not very fit to expose CS skills. An employer I know (in the startup scene) said he trashed all europass CV as he assumed you are a dull corporate droid who did not even take time to write a customized CV... (edit: grammar)
    • estaseuropano 5y ago
      That is great for all the people who prepared their CV in this format and avoided an employer who is unable to appreciate standards that work across borders or to realize that the information is more important than the format...
• hunglee2 5y ago
  The tl;dr is because we do not have one world government. The universal data format for resume has attempted - both by public and private sector actors. The Europass CV is a good example of the former, a universal profile for all EU citizens, which can used to apply for any job posted on the platform. LinkedIn might be considered a private sector attempt of the same. The issue that confronts both is adoption rate. Without forcing it through via mandate, employers will continue to accept resumes in whichever format and so job seekers will continue to optimise for the format they think will give them the best chance with said employer. Diversification comes from the simple fact that there is no single authority enforcing standardisation
• heisenbit 5y ago
  The resume is a sales document for a complex product and that calls for differentiation. A strictly standardized and thus severely limited reflection of said product would serve neither buyer nor seller. It may however serve the platform provider (aka. HR) by saving processing costs and by being able to show they are getting the ‚best’ product for a given price.
• user_named 5y ago
  There is. LinkedIn.
• estaseuropano 5y ago
  The EU has tried to put one in place, and it is used for all EU funding programmes and by a number of national and local administrations in Europe, so probably tens of millions used per year. Not sure I like the format but its good it stresses experience and narrative over just 'formal' data. And they have done it quite nicely that you can either download a template and work offline, or you can work in the browser and then download later again upload/import your CV to continue editing, make versions, etc without any data being stored on the server. https://europa.eu/europass/en https://europa.eu/europass/en
  • andylynch 5y ago
    Yes - this is Europass CV. The XML schema is described at https://europa.eu/europass/en/eportfolio-interoperability https://europa.eu/europass/en/eportfolio-interoperability (the web builder and I'm sure other tools attach the XML to the PDF you download so HR apps can easily make sense of it). It's a specialisation of HR-XML which was one of the first standards groups in this area (now part of https://www.hropenstandards.org https://www.hropenstandards.org).
  • opk 5y ago
    I always use the Europass format. For an IT sysadmin job, it's not like I'm trying to prove that I know how to use a basic word processor. Or demonstrate the type of artistic design skills that go into coming up with my own format. I like the fact that by using something standard, I'm less likely to be judged on stuff like choice of font etc. It tends to cover key details in a fairly terse format well which at least leaves scope for more wordy explanations in a cover letter. I find I don't end up needing to tweak the CV much when adapting it for different job applications while any cover letter does tend to then be fully one-off. That said, my record in actually ever landing a new job is fairly woeful but that may be more down to being poor in interviews.
  • julian_sark 5y ago
    Amazing - I have recently created a CV at the EU's job advert aggregation website, EURES, and that appears to be a separate thing? Great to have a standard when the own organization doesn't appear to follow it? wonder
• foxes 5y ago
  Because life is Turing complete.
• adenozine 5y ago
  Why isn't there a universal format for paintings? Why isn't there a universal format for love songs? Why isn't there a universal format for films?
• ID1452319 5y ago
  Slightly off topic, but I have seen a number of comments mentioning "CV parsing". I implement HR technology for a living, which obviously includes recruitment solutions. I have never seen a company implement automated CV parsing, as in rejecting CVs which don't contain certain keywords. Does anyone have first hand experience of working for a company which does implement automated CV parsing?
  • chrisseaton 5y ago
    Seems to be super common? https://www.jobscan.co/blog/fortune-500-use-applicant-tracking-systems/ https://www.jobscan.co/blog/fortune-500-use-applicant-tracki...
    • ID1452319 5y ago
      An Applicant Tracking System is just the industry term for recruitment software. Therefore, you'd expect every company to have one. I can't see anything in that link that suggests those companies are doing automated CV parsing.
      • chrisseaton 5y ago
        Says it all the way through? > Some ATS, like Taleo, even automatically rank applicants by comparing the uploaded resume to the job description. This allows recruiters to cherry pick candidates at the top of the ranking. Outside of tech jobs if you apply to a big-five or something they’re absolutely doing this.
        • ID1452319 5y ago
          I agree that the tools provide that capability, but I have never seen them implemented anywhere, hence asking if anyone has first hand experience.
• deleted 5y ago
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• tadpol 5y ago
  There is Europass resumes which is quite common in Europe (At least in my country). Is is a good think? For most of the job positions it is okay, but if you want to stand out you need to make something unique.
• est 5y ago
  Somewhat related question, are there any universal data format for book, music and movie reviews? Then we can build a decentralized IMDb, goodreads, etc.
• virtualritz 5y ago
  Same reason there is none for business cards. A business card conveys much more than purely the name, title and contact information of its bearer. My CV/résumé is done using exquisite typography (since I studied that) and the choice of fonts and layout has a message too. There is an interesting symmetry between the early role role of business cards and résumés today btw.[1] These things can not be captured by the contents alone. [1] https://www.caseyprinting.com/blog/what-is-the-history-of-business-cards https://www.caseyprinting.com/blog/what-is-the-history-of-bu... Edit: typos
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• JMS2021 5y ago
  UK here. Recruited lots of people for my company. The technical details are irrelevant. Recruitment agency sends you CV. That CV has all names, address, phone numbers and email addresses removed. This is to stop the recruiter from bypassing the expensive agency and contacting the applicant directly to save agency fees Next, no age or DOB is displayed. That's against the equality act here. Next, the recruitment agency pastes their logos at the top of your CV for advertising purposes End result is that your CV looks nothing like it did when you sent it. The formatting is broken, it prints over 6+ pages. That's why they don't take PDFs, as they can't edit it.
  • chiph 5y ago
    The few times I have had this happen to me, I have apologized to the interviewer for it. I knew it made their job harder to figure out what the recruiting firm had done to a relative standard resume layout. I would then hand them a paper copy from my bag that was actually readable. Doing so probably made the recruiting company mad, but if there was such a lack of trust between them about "stealing" candidates, I don't know what I could do to fix that.
• mrkramer 5y ago
  Everything cab be standardized so resumes can be as well. LinkedIn serves as a central hub for resumes in the "West" but how long and hard you can push it? In EU there is something like Europass which serves like a central hub for EU citizens' resumes and that can be seen as standardization format for resumes at least in the EU.
  • mrkramer 5y ago
    can*
• deleted 5y ago
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• vrajeshkanna 5y ago
  [dead]
• matthewmcneely 5y ago
  I definitely think there should be, and my project (Nectr, https://nectr.network https://nectr.network) is an attempt at a standard format. Along with the common things (job history, education, et.al.), we also try to pin your abilities (skills, platforms, etc) to entries in our knowledge graph of IT skills and platforms; and we encode availability in a standard way. IMO, these two aspects are crucial to finding the right talent, when they are available.
• acim 5y ago
  https://jsonresume.org/ https://jsonresume.org/
• techsin101 5y ago
  To me linkedin is kinda standard resume alternative
• dudus 5y ago
  That's what LinkedIn is
• xpil 5y ago
  https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
• westurner 5y ago
  Looks like there's an hresume microformat but https://schema.org/Person https://schema.org/Person and https://schema.org/Occupation https://schema.org/Occupation are probably the way to mark up resumes as JSONLD. From https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51315725/resume-work-history-and-organization-format-with-json-ld-and-schema-org-vocab https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51315725/resume-work-his... : > Schema.org's Occupation example 4, illustrates how to use Role and hasOccupation to associate an array of work history, like so: There's already a https://schema.org/JobPosting https://schema.org/JobPosting .
• alpaylan 5y ago
  I had a similar thought, actually started an open source project by myself at https://github.com/alpaylan/cvdl https://github.com/alpaylan/cvdl My view is to have it similar to html/css paradigm of web. I started working with TOML based schemas for defining CV's, actually wrote my CV in the schema. If you wanna go forward, I would love to be a contributor, also I would love to get your opinions.
• chiph 5y ago
  I used to be on the HR-XML standards committee which created XSD schemas for resumes (and other job-related data, like background checks). They seem to have morphed into the HR Open Standards Consortium: https://www.hropenstandards.org https://www.hropenstandards.org You must join (via email) in order to have access to the standards. Documentation for implementing the standards is via paid membership. However, I have never seen a job site that will accept a conforming .XML file as an upload. They all want a .DOCX or .PDF, which they then proceed to mangle. I can't explain why companies implement (bad) first-tier filtering via software, other than it's likely from their recruiters complaining to their bosses about all the spam and inappropriate candidates they get for openings.
• bruckie 5y ago
  I was a contributor to the XML Resumé Project 20(!) years ago (http://xmlresume.sourceforge.net/ http://xmlresume.sourceforge.net/), which could have been such a universal format. The goal was more about making it easy to render your resume in multiple formats, rather than data interchange, though. I think that https://jsonresume.org/ https://jsonresume.org/ is the modern equivalent (with much less XML, thankfully :).
• joaofiliperocha 5y ago
  Yes there is ... https://europa.eu/europass/en/europass-interoperability https://europa.eu/europass/en/europass-interoperability
• quda 5y ago