I second the study idea
It is an interesting idea and it would be interesting to see the percentages for machine read vs. eletronic vs. human read. A secondary option would be to do it by industry. If it turns out that the bulk of the IT industry strongly favors one particular method, for example, it would help job seekers determine where they most want to focus their resume tweaking.
I also wonder about font issues other than serif vs. sans serif. My personal pet peeve is a font that does not clearly delineate between zeros and O's and lower case l's (12th letter) vs. upper case I's (9th letter) vs. the number 1. Serif fonts tend to be better at this, but are there some sans serif that handle these characters well? Or, more on point, does this issue cause much trouble for resumes?
