Terrible resume advice in LinkedIn

I recently saw a recruiter post this on LinkedIn:

Save it as a Word doc (.doc or .docx) Not a PDF. Not a Pages file. Recruiters often need to make small tweaks before sending it on to hiring managers. And PDFs are a nightmare to edit.

This is terrible advice. Nobody should be editing your resume on your behalf before sending to a hiring manager. I don’t care how small the “tweaks” are, a recruiter should never modify your work.

Recruiters are incentivized by putting as many matching candidates in front of hiring managers as quickly as possible, but this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. You should always be 100% in control of what hiring managers see.

And on the hiring side, this is equally bad advice. It’s 2025, many folks and companies don’t bother with Word so the formatting and presentation of your resume will be a complete mess in Google Docs or Pages. This is exactly why PDFs are the best way to send your resume — pixel perfect rendering and locked from recruiter shenanigans. 🤦

Originally posted on LinkedIn.