The short version
- Oracle Taleo ships with a default of 1 MB per attached file and 10 files per record. An employer can raise the file size, but Oracle caps any single file at 5 MB.
- Greenhouse accepts uploads up to 100 MB. That is a hundredfold difference between two systems you apply through in the same afternoon.
- Because the limits differ that much, only the smallest one is useful advice. Stay under 1 MB and every documented system accepts the file.
- Raising a Taleo limit requires the employer to file a service request with Oracle. It is not a setting a recruiter flips.
- Almost every oversized resume is oversized for one of two reasons: an embedded photo, or a document exported as an image rather than as text.
File size is the least discussed constraint in job applications and one of the few with published, checkable numbers attached. It is also the only one that can stop an application before anything is evaluated at all: an upload that exceeds the limit does not get parsed badly, it does not get submitted.
The numbers are public, and they are further apart than almost anyone expects.
The documented limits
Oracle publishes Taleo's defaults precisely. Attached File Maximum Size defaults to 1048576 bytes, exactly 1 MB, and Attached File Maximum Number to 10 files per entity record. The same settings govern every attachment in the suite, from candidate files to offers.
Oracle also sets a ceiling of 5 MB per file. It is not a per-submission allowance: Oracle allows any combination of file size and file count as long as it does not exceed 5 MB per file or the employer's package limits. In its Basic package example, the total is capped at 10 MB.
The file count is shared, too. Oracle counts candidate-facing attachments across all of a candidate's profiles and job submissions, so the default 10 covers everything you send to that employer's Taleo, not each application.
Greenhouse sits at the other extreme: candidates can upload doc, docx, pdf, rtf and txt files up to 100 MB, and employers who want anything larger are told to ask for a link instead. For a resume, that is effectively no limit.
| System | Candidate upload limit | Related guidance |
|---|---|---|
| Oracle Taleo | 1 MB per file, 10 files per candidate by default; at most 5 MB per file if raised | Changes need an Oracle Support service request; macros are blocked by default |
| Greenhouse | 100 MB per upload | If an upload fails, re-save as PDF and reduce the file size |
| Workday | None found in public documentation | Parsing guidance: use resumes without images or image-based styles |
| iCIMS | None found in public documentation | Its text-extraction API gives up after 1 minute 30 seconds, with two attempts |
Workday and iCIMS publish no candidate-facing figure we could find, so the lowest published number is the one to design around. It holds everywhere we can check, and meeting it costs nothing.
Why the low limit tends to stay low
Taleo's 1 MB is a default rather than a maximum, so in principle an employer could raise it. In practice, Oracle's documentation states that changing these limits requires a service request submitted for validation by Oracle Support.
“A limit that requires a support ticket to change is a limit that mostly does not get changed.”
So while you cannot know a given employer's configuration, the base rate strongly favours the default. Assuming 1 MB costs you nothing and protects you against the one failure mode that produces no application at all.
What actually makes a resume large
A two-page text document has no business approaching a megabyte. Text is tiny. When a resume is oversized, it is almost always carrying something that is not text.
- A photograph. A single uncompressed headshot can exceed the entire Taleo default by itself.
- A scanned document. A scan is an image of a page. It is large, and it also carries no text layer to parse, so it fails twice.
- Embedded fonts. Full font embedding on an unusual typeface adds substantial weight for no benefit to a parser.
- Design assets. Icons, skill bars, background graphics and logos, none of which are extracted as anything.
- Export settings. Print-quality or press-quality PDF export can inflate a file several times over screen quality.
The consistent pattern is that everything inflating the file is also something a parser cannot read. Cutting size and improving extraction are the same edit, which is unusually convenient.
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If extraction returns little or nothing from a large file, the document is almost certainly an image rather than text, which is the case where size and parse failure share a single cause.
Practical targets
Aim comfortably under 1 MB. A text-based resume of ordinary length, exported at screen quality without a photo, typically lands between 50 and 300 KB, so the target requires no compromise on content.
If a file will not come down, the fix is to find the image rather than to compress harder. Remove the photo, replace any graphic elements with text, and re-export from the original document rather than re-saving the PDF, which usually leaves the embedded assets in place. Then run the new file through an ATS resume checker to confirm the text still extracts cleanly.