There are three different common standards: HR Open Standards Candidate, schema.org and JSON Resume. HROS (which does XML and JSON) is used as a data exchange format between enterprise ATS and HRIS it's very comprehensive and is very detailed (perhaps too detailed). Schema.org seems mostly like Google and friends just making something up (without even trying to work with other existing standards) and trying to get everyone to use it. JSON resume is about what it sounds like it is. Oh, and then there are various de facto standards where ATSes that work with job boards like Indeed or data vendors like People Data Labs... So there's a lot of standards. The problem is:
a good standard is one everyone uses.
Personal opinion: resumes are actually kind of hard. I've personally been involved in HR Open Standards and even though it is a very complete standard, it's still hard to map real world resumes into the format sometimes. There is a shocking amount of ambiguity, and a shocking amount of adjacent standards (some of those have been adopted) for describing work history, education, certifications, people and workplaces.
So... most of the industry just parses resumes into some internal schema, and a lot of employers make job seekers enter their education and history on a job application form so they get it their way. It's really messy. Hope that helps.
Schema.org doesn't have anything for the resume side of things. They have a model for a job listing, so job listings can appear in search results with special formatting, but nothing for resumes.
HR Open Standards is only available with membership. Doesn't appear very "open", but I'd assume that doesn't matter much to the industry.
JSON Resume seems like the best take so far. I've used it for my resume and at my current job, and, although we've had to extend the schema, it's a great base to start with. It's got all the structured fields one would need to build a resume. It would be trivial for a company to start accepting it, at least as a way to pre-fill all the "education and history" fields that we have to fill out anyway.
>HR Open Standards is only available with membership. Doesn't appear very "open", but I'd assume that doesn't matter much to the industry.
Membership is free and you can access the standards (from their website hropenstandards.org):
"The versions of HR Open Standards linked below are available for free public download. You need to be logged in to download the standards. If you're not already an HR Open Standards member, you can register for a free Community membership account."
Schema.org treats resume data as an extension of person. There's hasOccupation and role and alumniOf and organizationRole. It's not a "resume" it's a profile (old joke for job board people).
a good standard is one everyone uses.
Personal opinion: resumes are actually kind of hard. I've personally been involved in HR Open Standards and even though it is a very complete standard, it's still hard to map real world resumes into the format sometimes. There is a shocking amount of ambiguity, and a shocking amount of adjacent standards (some of those have been adopted) for describing work history, education, certifications, people and workplaces.
So... most of the industry just parses resumes into some internal schema, and a lot of employers make job seekers enter their education and history on a job application form so they get it their way. It's really messy. Hope that helps.