Automated applicant tracking systems do the first read of many resumes employers receive. These robots won’t be impressed with all your fancy formatting, so just skip it.

Draft your resume in a word processing program so you’ll get the spelling and grammar assistance then paste it into Notepad or a similar program and saving as plain text. “A plain text resume has the best chance of surviving all of the storage, retrieval and automatic review processes resumes are put through these days.”

Bullet points with facts and figures will better demonstrate your skills and experience than long sentences.

Consider adding an executive summary near the top of your resume that includes two or three bullet points demonstrating the key skills and the value you’ll bring the employer. Not only will this give you an opportunity to use the keywords robots love, but it also will force you to put some serious thought into your elevator pitch.

Elsewhere in your resume, bullet points can be a quick and effective way to show the results you delivered or key experience you’ve acquired at previous jobs.

Now that your keywords and plain text have gotten past the robots, it’s time for your resume to pass the human test. This is the Twitter era and “tl;dr” is a real phenomenon. That’s “too long, didn’t read,” in case you didn’t know.

The human with the authority to offer you an interview doesn’t want to read lengthy paragraphs and descriptions of your old job duties. “Rewrite and rewrite until your value proposition jumps out at a glance, because that's all you’re going to get,” Hoult recommends.

Carefully evaluate whether your early career experience is relevant to the job you’re applying for now. If it’s not relevant, don’t include it.

“Summarize early career experience in one bullet point per job or position. For the most part, listing the details of early positions is irrelevant and takes up space on the page,” Esposito says.

The same is true for most college information, Seidman says. If you held a leadership position in an extracurricular organization or received any honors, you can include that information. Otherwise, most information beyond your school and degree is unnecessary.