Will a poorly formatted resume be cause for my application to be thrown out?
I applied to a BB (SA) a while back and did the whole application. I spoke with an alumnus from my school before doing this and I sent him a copy of my resume, you know, the whole networking thing. Well, I come to discover that the version of my resume that I submitted to the firm (but not the pdf I sent the alumnus) was "damaged" and the formatting was wrong. The resume is still readable, but I imagine it reflects rather poorly on me. A week after the deadline (I did it very early, plus I'm pretty sure many of you can guess the firm now) I sent the recruiting staff an email apologizing for my mistake and containing a fixed resume. They responded that it is too late to submit a new resume, so I cannot replace the one that was already submitted. My question boils down to this: will that keep me from getting an interview? The alumnus I spoke with seemed to like me and I think that I AM one of three people he would have recommended. It's too bad because I think this firm is one of my top 2-3 choices. Thanks in advance.
I would say 'Yes'.
Yeah, that's what I was worried about. When you have so many highly qualified candidates, something like this could really kill someone's application.
yes, reflects poorly. A lot of IB or any entry level job is formatting....
Yes..
I figured as much. Well, I appreciate the responses, is there anything I can do at this point to help myself at this firm or do I just chalk it up as a loss and not make the same mistake in the future?
Can you re-submit?
ie withdraw and re-sub
The deadline for submission has passed, I tried emailing them about that earlier. I guess my only hope is that the person I know there may have passed on the resume I emailed him a month ago instead of my application one.
Yes. A lot of corporations actually have these programs that filter resumes. Any that have spelling mistakes get tossed out without even looking. The second round of cuts generally happens if your GPA 3.5, then maybe, just maybe, they'll look. Bear in mind this only really applies to some offices though that get substantial applications or which have access to a lot of resources (which, since you mention BB, they probably do if it's FO). If its just a question of comparative aesthetics (i.e. a font thing), not a big deal I wouldn't say.
Yeah, this is IB, so FO at one of the most prestigious BBs on the street (not that that is the specific reason I'd love to work there). The issue is that apparently when I converted my updated resume from a .doc to a .pdf file, the spaces and formatting changed, so there were a couple of lines that were supposed to be right aligned to make it pretty, but instead they are left aligned spaced only by like a tab. I understand that for IB especially, attention to detail is crazy important, but I'm worried that the aesthetics will get me filtered out immediately.
Chalk it up to experience and pursue other opportunities. Do not dwell too much on it because it will eat at you the more you focus on it. Learn from it going forward and do your best to nail down resume format for other applications.
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