Standard headings help because parsers use them as landmarks. Labels like Experience, Education, and Skills tell the software which fields it is extracting; a heading like My Story or Where I Have Been gives it nothing to recognize. Creative headings do not get you rejected, they get you misfiled.
Field extraction works by pattern recognition, and the patterns come from what most resumes do. When the parser cannot tell where your experience section begins, jobs can end up unlabeled or attached to the wrong section in the record a recruiter opens.
This costs you nothing to fix, and the human reader benefits too: the first scan from a recruiter is about 7 seconds, per a Ladders eye-tracking study, and familiar landmarks are what make a page scannable that fast. Save the personality for the bullets, where it earns its space.
“Calling your work history My Adventure So Far confuses the software and, worse, tells the recruiter nothing in a hurry.”
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