
Ask HN: Have you ever used “white text” in a resume to pass through filters? - imheretolearn
How was your experience?
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dvtrn
I actually have a story about this, while I never did it myself I had someone
apply to a role two jobs ago who did. HR didn’t catch it, and I only did by
highlighting a refererence name off the resume to put into an email and
accidentally picked up more text, white text.

We brought him in, interviewed him, ultimately couldn’t afford what he was
asking for but I put him in touch with an agency recruiter I knew to be top
notch and would advocate for the fella, only on the promise that he cleaned up
his resume and gave him a very knowing and telegraphed look. He picked up what
I was putting down immediately.

Got an email from him two months later, he had gotten an offer from a company
agency recruiter sent him to and thanked me for the referral. The guy was
otherwise qualified, maybe a _little_ green for some of _our_ specific
requirements, but throughout the interview checked all the right boxes as an
engineer and seemed like a good dude overall, but he just was not getting
calls back.

To this day I maintain had my CFO given me more money for the position I would
have hired him, I thought he was trainable and could easily pick up and
contribute. Ultimately lost contact but I like to imagine he’s doing fine.

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user_agent
Hahaha, this is brilliant. You made my day, @OP :-)

Yes, on several occasions when I was very young (therefore stupid) and angry,
I put something like "suck by balls" with white font on my resume, when I was
targeting companies I didn't respect. I don't know why / I don't remember. I
guess I wanted to feel superior with my 1999 MS Word skills? Lol.

No, because that isn't going to work the way you think. Keywords search is
usually performed internally on corporate HR systems, but not on the docs you
attach to the process - ONLY on what you put in the forms on their website
during apllication. They also calculate some BS numbers from that data, like:
how many years of experience total, how many years of education, how old is
the candidate, bla bla bla.

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_ah
Rather than "invisible text", I've typically included a block of relevant
items at the bottom of my resume in a smaller font under the heading "Keyword
Clickbait".

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sdwedq
I do similar thing, but I just call it just "Keywords".

Then I have separate section, Recent Skills, where I list buzzwords which I
have decent experience with.

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rman666
I don’t think it would work, text is text, but it’s an interesting idea!
Someone should hire you for your ideas!

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non-entity
The idea is to pass through automated resume scanners by dumping keywords that
the ATS may auto reject you for not otherwise having. However since its white
they wont be visibile to a human eye if someone were to print it off
unmodifed.

