Taleo resume format and parsing guide

Employers configure Taleo's application as a series of steps (an "application flow"). Oracle's implementation guide for career sections calls it a best practice to put the Resume Upload block on all application flows "to ease the input burden on the candidates". (Oracle documentation (Taleo Enterprise))

1. Start the application in the employer's career section. The steps depend on the flow the employer configured.
2. Upload your resume. If Resume Parsing is on, "the system will automatically extract the relevant information included in the profile and fill out part of the online submission. You can review the extracted information and make the appropriate changes in the next steps." (Oracle documentation (Taleo Enterprise))
3. Or import a profile from a third-party service the employer has enabled, after signing in to it; Oracle says you must then review the imported data.
4. On a phone, paste instead. Career sections can offer "Paste the resume": the pasted text is parsed to pre-populate the application and attached as a text file. (Oracle documentation (Taleo Enterprise))
5. Review the pre-filled steps, then submit.

Oracle's Legacy Recruiting documentation, written for recruiters creating candidate files, lists what the parser extracts: (Oracle documentation (Taleo Enterprise))

• Personal information: first, middle and last name, address, city, postal code, home phone, email, place of residence.
• Education: education level, graduation date, start date, institution, program.
• Work experience: start date, end date, employer, job function, responsibility.

It adds: "Resume Parsing has no impact on the formatting of a text (bold, italics, bullets). It can detect text in the header and footer." That recruiter-side upload accepts .doc, .docx, .wpd, .txt, .rtf, .html, .pdf, .xls, .xlsx and .odt, up to 100 KB unless the administrator sets another size, and resumes in a language other than the submission language "might not be supported".

For Taleo Business Edition, Oracle says the Career Center accepts PNG and JPEG resumes, but "the resume will not be parsed when it is in an image format". Parsing fills the "resume keyword" field recruiters search, so an image resume can be missed in those searches. (Oracle documentation (Taleo Business Edition))

1. Upload a text-based file, not a photo. A photo of your resume is accepted by Taleo Business Edition but not parsed, so it adds nothing to keyword search.
2. Date every job and degree. The parser has fields for start and end dates, employer, institution and program. Give each job and each degree its dates.
3. Match the language of the career section. Oracle notes that resumes in another language than the submission language might not be supported.
4. Review the pre-filled steps. Oracle's own wording assumes you will: "review the extracted information and make the appropriate changes".
5. Keep a plain-text copy for your phone. Some career sections let you paste a resume on mobile instead of uploading a file.

In a study dated 9 October 2026, we exported 21 PDFs from Resumity's 7 templates and read them back with three open-source text extractors, pdf.js, pdftotext and pypdf (63 extractions). Every name, email, phone number, section heading and bullet came back intact and in order. That tells you the text layer of those PDFs is complete.

It does not tell you how Taleo reads the same file. We have not tested Resumity's templates in Taleo, and each employer configures its own setup. The method, limits and raw data are on how we test our templates.