You and your resume’s ready to go out there to get you the job. You’ve updated it, highlighted your transferable skills, and triple-checked it. Now the only question is how you submit it. Should it be a PDF or Word document?

The answer to this is complicated. But to help you to make the most educated decision, there are some valuable arguments which will help you choose the favorable option.

#There is a 90+% chance your targeted employer uses an ATS (applicant tracking system). This means they are digitally importing your resume into a candidate database to analyze against the job description. The parsing tools work best using MS Word.

#PDF documents often have to be printed on paper, then scanned, and converted back to text using OCR (optical character recognition) technology. This leaves room for mistakes, and presents your resume as substandard compared to those in MS Word.

#PDF files include a number of meta data elements, and is a proprietary format specifically designed for security of documents – don’t make that a barrier for the employer’s ATS.

#Anything in your resume that makes it harder for a recruiter or hiring manager to include is a reason for them to eliminate you as a candidate and reduce the candidate list.

#MS Word is universal. Nearly everyone has a copy of Microsoft Office, and most corporations have standardized on it. Alternatively, Google Docs is free to anyone, and reads and edits MS Word Docs flawlessly.

#Your recruiter is your agent and advocate. If they need to tweak your resume fix your spelling errors, or other refinement to get you in the door at the employer, they cannot do that with PDF.

#Don’t make it hard for your recruiter to help you. If your recruiter has to ask you to send a second version of your resume to them in MS Word format, they probably won’t ask – instead submitting the candidate that already did.