Which Resume Format is Best - PDF vs Word

How to get an interview? How to stand out from the crowd? How to ensure a perfect fit for the dream job? A resume is the first tool that could be used to show oneself, and it's almost the only key to an interview.

Whether to get an ideal job or not can be directly affected by a resume, which gives a chance to present one's personal details in the best possible light. So don't miss or blow an opportunity: a well-formatted resume will get you more interviews. Then here comes the question, what is the best format for a resume when there are no clear instructions from the employers? PDF or Word? Let's explore it together!

1. What does a resume mean to a job seeker and an interviewer?

2. What is PDF?

3. What is Word?

4. Comparisons between PDF & WORD

5. What the advantages of PDF?

6. Why PDF Reader Pro?

1. What does a resume mean to a job seeker and an interviewer?

Right before making a choice between PDF and Word, it is of great significance to understand the core needs of different people for a resume. Getting to the nature of the problem might be helpful in figuring out which format is better.

For interviewer

Remember the person who has to read your resume. He or she may have a hundred from which to narrow down a handful of interviewees. This is a tedious task and if your resume is unclear, badly laid out he or she will move on to the next one. Use a clear, logical layout to make it easy to read. Actually, the interviewer's basic requirements for a resume format are as follows:

• Ease of browsing

• Easy to open, can be opened by various software

• Document authenticity, consistency of a resume as seen by both

For a job seeker

Bearing this in mind, what can be gained from a well-formatted resume? As the saying goes, A good start is half the battle. A resume is just like a person's appearance. A good resume can give others a good impression and increase the possibility of attending an interview and the success rate of the interview. Therefore, interviewees have some basic demands for a resume:

• Convenient transport & edition

• Print clearly to avoid formatting errors

• High security, file content will not be arbitrarily tampered with

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2. What is PDF?

PDF (Portable Document Format), a general electronic format that can encapsulate text, font, format, color, graphic image, hypertext link, sound, dynamic image and other information in a file. It has become an industry standard for digital information. Features of PDF: a page description format; complete information; visual communication structure; super compression; page independence; high compatibility, etc.

3. What is Word?

WORD, a word processor application developed by Microsoft. It was originally written by Richard Brodie in 1983 for the IBM computer running DOS. The main functions and features of WORD are: what you see is what you get; intuitive operation interface; multimedia mixing; powerful tabulation function; autocorrect function; template and wizard functions; rich help function; web tools support; superstrong facultative capacity; strong printing power; the alterability of text lattice, etc.

4. Comparisons between PDF & WORD

Resume is a crucial guarantee to enter the interview process, and among many factors affecting career positioning, salary and welfare treatment, a resume plays a vital role in the interview evaluation, which is the key link to ensure a satisfactory result.

This paper mainly starts from aspects related to the job of the interviewer and the needs of the interviewee, and compares the performance of the two kinds of documents in the interview evaluation process, such as ease of use, Document authenticity, document security and document printing. The results are shown in Table 1. As you can see, WORD performs worse than or equal to PDF except for a slight advantage in direct editing.

Table 1：A comparison related to the pros and cons of using PDF or Word resume

Note: Here "➕" stands for which side does better when comparing various functions, while "➖" represents relative weakness.

5. What the advatages of PDF?

Looking around the world, more and more job seekers' resumes are converted to PDF format and used as interview review documents. This is due to:

• PDF is a high compression document, supporting a variety of standard industrial compression algorithms to compress text, graphics and images, making the storage space greatly reduced, so that the resume is more compact, which is very suitable for network transmission and storage.

• PDF is an integrated document, which can package text, font, format, color and graphics and images independent of device and resolution into a file, so that the reading of PDF can be independent of the version and font of the application, which ensures the same resume layout and complete information in any environment.

• PDF is a cross-platform document, which can ensure that text and image documents are not restricted by the computer software environment. That is, PDF files are universal across Windows, Unix, Linux, and Apple's Macintosh operating system. A PDF resume is easy to open, browse, and print for both candidates and interviewers.

• To view, edit, and convert, encrypt PDFs, simply need to install PDF Reader Pro.

6. Why PDF Reader Pro?

As can be seen from the above, related to resume format, PDF beats Word in every other respect except for its slightly inferior editing capabilities. But with our PDF Reader Pro, both job seekers and interviewers can have a PDF powerhouse that can easily unlock the following features:

• PDF File compression：Reduce file size to make sure you can easily send the resume by email.

• Read & annotate PDFs：Support multiple reading modes and display modes. Improve your reading experience.

• Security：Encrypt your resume to prevent  irrelevant people from reading your private information.Thus ensuring the authenticity of your PDF resume.

• Edit and modify PDF text：With PDF Reader Pro, you can freely edit and modify your PDF resume.

• Convert PDF to Word, Excel, PPT unlimited：Meet all your resume format conversion demands in one app, avoid time wasting and thus improving your work efficiency.

• Organize pages, split, merge, insert, delete：Easily meet the requirements of PDF format resumes in page editing. Fixed page format for easy printing as well.

• Create & Fill out forms and sign documents：Fill out the interactive form required by the company online to simplify the tedious paperwork process and improve your work efficiency!

PDF Reader Pro for Mac, Windows, iOS, Android 

Altogether,  in resume format, PDF is your best bet. And in the PDF processor aspects, PDF Reader Pro should be firmly selected. We are sure that the value our products bring to your work will be much more than its price as they can improve your work efficiency and save more time. 

So don't hesitate to choose a PDF format resume when there are no clear format requirements.  And choose us, PDF Reader Pro, an all-new PDF powerhouse that helps you to process your resume faster and better. Free download or buy PDF Reader Pro with 50% Off now!