Why does my job description look poorly formatted?
If your job description is formatted poorly, or formatted inconsistently between the editor and the listing on your careers website, it's because of one of two reasons:
- You copied the job description from Microsoft Word or another
rich text editor.
- You copied the job description from a Web page
A well-formatted job description is essential to increasing your response rate. You should never rely on Word or the styling from a Web page for the formatting of your job description. Format the job in The Resumator from scratch. It is easiest to just say you will always need to reformat your job when you paste it into The Resumator. Here's how:
Step 1: Clean the Text of Bad Characters
Before you paste your job description into the editor, you should paste it into the yellow box that is provided. This will remove the weird characters that Microsoft Word includes with your job without you knowing it. It also strips out formatting that you will copy over if the job was copied from a web page.
Once you've stripped the text of these hidden issues, you can copy the clean text from the yellow box into the editor.
Step 2: Strip all the "Hidden" Formatting
There are three buttons to the right of the editor. For good measure, you should use these to verify that there are no weird characters or hidden formatting in the description.
Step 3: Fix Bulleted Lists and Headings
If you copy a job description from Microsoft Word, the bullets you see in the description are not an actual bulleted list in the editor. It's just bullets or asterisks in front of text. You will need to remove the bullets copied from Word, highlight the list again, and click the list toolbar icon.
Next, you should look for ways to bold important information, such as headings. Try to find ways to make your job easy tos can using the formatting options available to you.