The visual arrangement of a PDF and its logical reading order are not always the same. W3C documents this distinction for accessible PDFs, and Greenhouse lists column layouts among possible parsing problems. Neither source proves that every two-column resume fails or that a layout automatically causes rejection.
Visual order and text order
Columns can create ambiguity about which text should come next. In a tagged PDF, reading order can be controlled separately from visual placement. Different readers and extraction tools may use different information, so no fixed column gap guarantees success.
Inspect the actual export
Copy the text into a plain-text editor and check whether names, roles, dates and bullets stay together. Also inspect reading order with an accessibility tool if available. A clean result is useful evidence for that check only; it does not reproduce every employer parser.
Simplify when there is a real problem
If sections interleave or fields are captured incorrectly, try a single-column version and compare the output. Keep the content unchanged during the comparison so you can tell whether the layout adjustment helped.
- Keep related job information together
- Inspect the exported file, not only the editor
- Compare a simpler layout when extraction is wrong
- Review the actual application before submitting