White Fonting: What It Is, Why It’s Risky, and How Employers Should Respond

It is said that the brilliance of innovation often creates loopholes that are visible only to those willing to exploit them. 

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are a welcome development in HR as they streamline the recruitment process by screening resumes for keywords and skills. Most recruiters use them for candidate screening. However, an understanding of keyword matching, the working principle of ATS, has given rise to a dishonest tactic called white fonting.

White fonting is the act of candidates adding vital keywords and skills from a job description to their resume or CV in white-colored font. This makes these keywords invisible to human readers but detectable by the ATS. It’s quite similar to a trick implemented by many webmasters in the early days of search engine optimization (SEO), involving adding multiple invisible keywords to a webpage for crawlers to read and rank the page high. 

Beyond a mere HR buzzword, white fonting can be a real menace for HR. Candidates use it to bypass the ATS’ keyword filters and appear qualified for the position, all without having their resumes look suspicious.

Keep reading to learn the effects of white fonting on HR and actionable steps your organization can take to stop its ravaging effect.             

The Impact of White Fonting on HR

White fonting adversely affects HR in multiple ways. A prominent negative impact is its disruption of fair candidate screening. Stuffing keywords in a resume basically tricks the ATS into ranking those applicants higher while forcing better-qualified candidates down the list. 

This misleads recruiters to prioritise the applications of potentially unqualified candidates.

This tactic can also increase recruiters’ workload and waste their time. Recruiters may resort to manual reviews to identify resumes with white fonts. The time and effort dedicated to thoroughly assessing each resume for any manipulation can slow down the hiring process. 

Organizations can suffer reputational damage if their hiring process is found to be vulnerable to white fonting. Similarly, it can smear a candidate’s integrity and professionalism.         

How Organizations Can Manage White Fonting Effectively

Thankfully, white fonting isn’t an untamable beast. It can be effectively dealt with by organizations and their HR teams. All you need is the right strategy. 

Check out some practices that can help manage this invisible nuisance. 

1. Establish an Ethics and Integrity Clause

Making clear your organization’s stance on any form of manipulation can function as a strong deterrent. It signals that you value honesty and notifies candidates that their applications may be audited for any foul play, triggering a moral pause.    

Consider adding bold statements and policies discouraging white fonting in your job postings, career pages, application forms, and email confirmations. It’s important to outline the consequences of violations, such as disqualification and revocation of job offers.  

2. Leverage Standardised Application Formats

You can curb white fonting by requesting resumes to be submitted as .txt files. This standardised application format strips away design elements that enable formatting tricks. Without font color, bolding, or background, all hidden texts become visible, making it easier for recruiters to spot keyword stuffing.

Online application forms with structured fields can also frustrate keyword stuffing plans. They restrict where and how information can be entered, display raw input, and have character limits, all to prioritise relevance over noise and allow no hiding place.       

3. Implement Advanced Resume Screening Tools

Making a switch to modern ATS platforms can help you deal with white fonting effortlessly. These advanced tools typically have detection capabilities and parsing engines that can identify invisible elements and flag such resumes. 

4. Prepare Your Recruiting Team

It’s necessary to educate your hiring managers on white fonting to increase their awareness of resume fraud. Let them know why it’s a problem and inform them of its telltale signs. 

They function as an extra layer in resume screening; encourage them to preview resumes in plain-text format and take steps to detect manipulation. 

Some tips to spot white fonting include:

• Highlighting all text in the resume to reveal hidden content
• Changing all text color to black for instant detection
• Using Microsoft Word’s “Inspect Document” feature to reveal formatting and check for hidden text
• Comparing resume content with answers in structured fields
• Cross-checking ATS reports for oddities
• Inspecting resume margins and spacing since hidden text is often added in the final section and footers of the resumes
• Visually scanning resumes for super-tiny font sizes

This ensures that your resume screening strikes a firm balance between automation and manual review.

Efficiency is the promise of technology, but without the right guardrails, manipulation can be the outcome. White fonting betrays trust, which is a foundational element of the hiring process. Use the steps detailed above to fortify your hiring process against cunning candidates trying to exploit technology’s weak spots.