White fonting: A risky trick for making your resume stand out

Ideally, you should adapt your resume to each job you apply for. Image: LaylaBird / Getty Images©

Writing a resume isn't especially complicated. But writing one that attracts the attention of recruiters is far more difficult. To maximize their chances of success, some jobseekers are now trying their hand at “white-fonting.”

The idea of “white-fonting” is simple: jobseekers copy paragraphs from the job advertisement they're interested in and paste them in white into their resume, making them invisible to the human eye. They must also ensure that the text they hide in their resumes is as small as possible, so that it takes up as little room as possible and does not compromise the rest of the document. The aim of this technique is to fool the ATS (applicant tracking system) software used by recruiters to sort though applications they receive for a position as a first step in the recruitment process.

ATS software is based on algorithms that scan resumes for information that suggests an applicant is qualified, or not, for a position. They comb through the titles of previous jobs held by the applicant, or their skills and qualifications. ATS software doesn't read a resume in the same way as a recruiter. It looks for a match between keywords in a job description and those in an application. These programs have no qualms about eliminating an applicant who doesn't tick all the employer's predefined boxes, even if the applicant is qualified for the role.

Aware of the importance ATS places on keywords, some job applicants don't hesitate to fill their resumes with technical terms that are relevant to the position they're applying for, even if they have no connection with their professional background. And the most bold even go as far as using “white-fonting” to do this. But recruitment specialists warn against this trick. "Even if a candidate slips past the ATS filters, ultimately their resume is going to land in the hands of a real hiring manager. If that person sees discrepancies between the words on the page and the so-called skills labeled in their ATS profile, they're going to notice," explains Natalie Boren, senior vice president of recruitment firm Career Group Companies, speaking to Business Insider.

Also read: Mastering the virtual job interview: 10 tips and tricks

To avoid falling into such traps, the best thing to do is to adapt your resume to each job offer you apply for. This can be extremely time-consuming, but it's worth it if you're applying for your dream job. In any case, don't waste too much time polishing your resume. It's better to have a readable document that includes all the essential information (job titles, skills, education, etc.), rather than a highly polished one that will take a recruiter longer to decipher. Remember that, on average, a hiring manager typically spends between 30 seconds and 2 minutes reading a resume.