Bullets disappear.
Fonts change.
Spacing looks like it survived a small earthquake.
That’s exactly what was happening to one of the biggest healthcare companies in the U.S. Every single JD they pasted into Taleo came out looking…well, not something you’d want your candidates to see.
The Copy-Paste Problem
Like most recruiting teams, they were writing their job descriptions in Word or Google Docs, then pasting them into Taleo.
Here’s the issue: Taleo strips most of that formatting away—it treats it like plain text.
Bullets? Gone.
Headers? Flattened.
Brand fonts and spacing? Bye-bye.
The recruiters were spending up to 15 minutes per JD reformatting inside Taleo. Multiply that by hundreds of jobs a month, and you’ve got a serious time drain.
Why This Was Especially Painful
They were using both Taleo for applicant tracking and PhenomPeople for candidate experience.
Both platforms are strong on their own. Together? They weren’t protecting formatting at all.
And in healthcare, where compliance and professionalism are critical, broken formatting isn’t just ugly—it’s risky.
The Fix: Raw HTML Export
We rolled out one of my favorite Ongig features: Raw HTML export.
Here’s how it works:
Style your JD in Ongig exactly the way you want—bullets, bold text, brand fonts.
Instead of copying from Word or Google Docs, export it as clean HTML.
Paste that HTML into Taleo.
HTML is browser-ready and plays nicely with ATS systems.
When this healthcare company started pasting HTML instead of doc text, the problem vanished.
No reformatting.
No wasted time.
Just clean, professional JDs—every time.
Why Formatting Matters
It’s not just about aesthetics. Formatting affects:
Readability (and candidates love easy-to-skim posts)
Employer brand consistency
Recruiter efficiency
Compliance in regulated industries
And if you’re juggling multiple systems like Taleo + Phenom, formatting consistency becomes even more important.
The Before & After
Before:
Recruiters spent hours every week fixing formatting.
After:
Zero formatting issues. Hours saved. Happier recruiters.
And the candidate experience? Way better.
Quick Pro Tip
If you’re still writing JDs in Word and pasting them into your ATS, you might be living dangerously.
Word adds hidden formatting that most ATSs can’t interpret.
HTML is the universal language your ATS will understand.
Whether you use Ongig or another tool, make sure it gives you clean HTML export.
Final Thought
We see this formatting mess with Taleo (and other ATSs) all the time—especially in big companies with complex tech stacks.
It’s one of those “small” problems that adds up to big costs over time.
If this sounds familiar, I’d be happy to show you Ongig’s raw HTML export in action. Request a demo here.
Clean JDs shouldn’t be hard—and they definitely shouldn’t be ugly. Until next time, happy hiring!
