Format Resumes for BambooHR ATS Clients

When you submit candidate resumes to clients using BambooHR, the system automatically processes and stores these documents for recruiter review. BambooHR automates talent recruitment workflows including application sorting, ranking, storage, and candidate tracking. However, the parsing technology details are not publicly documented, making it crucial to follow established formatting best practices. Your candidate submissions become part of your client's automated workflow, where parsing failures can remove qualified candidates from consideration before human reviewers ever see them.

BambooHR accepts .doc and .docx formats for resume submissions, which are specifically recommended to ensure optimal ATS parsing. While PDFs may work in some cases, they are not explicitly confirmed as optimal for BambooHR's parsing system. For staffing agencies, this means converting candidate resumes to Word document formats before submission provides the best chance of successful parsing and prevents technical rejections that could harm your client relationships.

Common formatting issues that cause BambooHR to reject or poorly display your candidate submissions include complex graphics, tables, multi-column layouts, important information placed in headers or footers, non-standard fonts, and keyword stuffing. Functional resume formats are particularly difficult for BambooHR to parse correctly. These technical rejections occur before your client's hiring team even reviews the candidate, meaning qualified placements can be lost due to formatting issues rather than candidate qualifications. Understanding these limitations helps agencies prepare submissions that successfully navigate the initial parsing process.