The Angels Weekly

Part 1: Get that job interview by crafting a killer résumé!

The economy is tough, jobs are scarce, and you need a new one. But every résumé you send out gets a “Thanks, but no thanks” response…if you even get response at all. It’s happening everywhere…but not to everyone. What do you want to bet that the people getting those interviews…and the jobs…have killer résumés? If you want one too, just keep reading.

HR is not your friend!
A common error job seekers make is to assume that a company’s Human Resource department is their friend…or at least should be. They expect the HR Department to be their ally in getting interviewed and hired. It is not. The function of HR is not, as many believe, to help applicants find a job in their companies, their job is to keep you out!

Now, this is not as appalling as it first seems. In fact, they cannot operate any other way. If HR’s mandate was to take every résumé and application and help each person get a job in their firm, the company would never get its business done! In a tight economy, companies can receive thousands of application and résumés per week. Not only can they not spend time trying to find something for you inside, they can’t even give careful attention to each résumé they receive. Additionally, the hiring managers have a lot more to do with their time than interview hundreds of candidates for a single job opening. The objective of HR is to screen out as many applications and résumés as they can, referring only the top half dozen or so to the hiring manager for interview.

Your résumé can open doors
You cannot underestimate the power of an effective résumé in securing that interview. No résumé, no matter how well-crafted, can get you a job, but it is the key to unlocking the door to that all-important first interview. But if your key is not a good fit, that door is not going to open for you.

Because of the sheer volume of responses companies get to their employment ads, the people who screen the responses seldom read them in depth…they just can’t. What they do is skim the résumés in literally a matter of seconds, sorting them into three basic categories: yes, no, and maybe. And in the companies that use OCR software to scan incoming résumés for key words, there isn’t even a “maybe” pile!

The résumés in the “yes” pile will be more closely read and further sorted, and those that make the second, more in-depth review get called for interviews; the people in the “maybe” pile will get reviewed more closely and some of them may be called in for interviews if nobody in the “yes” pile tickles a hiring manager’s fancy. The people in the “no” pile get that “thanks, but no thanks” postcard…if they are lucky. So, how do you keep your résumé out of the “no” pile and into the “yes” pile? It all depends on how it is written.

Beware! Don’t tell more than they need to know!
Your résumé tells a lot more about you than you think. To you, it is your employment history, education summary, and contact information. The reader, however, can learn a great deal more than that in just the few seconds it takes to skim it.

Typos? You don’t pay attention to detail. Long, multi-page résumé? Are you too lazy to prune it to something manageable or too prideful to leave things out? Messy, disorganized layout, updates made by hand? Will you be a messy, disorganized worker who turns out an unprofessional work product? Brightly coloured paper? An attention hound, perhaps, or someone who likes to challenge corporate culture?

Some information can allow a screener to discriminate against you without you even knowing it. Your name can reveal your ethnicity and gender, and your address may lead someone to think you live too far away from their location. Even the dates of your degree can give away your age, allowing your résumé to be round-filed on the presumption that you are too old…or probably want too much money…to do a job. The reverse is also true…if you are a wunderkind and have climbed the ladder quickly, revealing your age by including your education dates may make some people think you are too young and immature…and perhaps brash…for the responsibility and gravitas their position requires.

This is not a time to get indignant over political issues…your objective is to secure an interview with this résumé and the wisest course is to refrain from giving any information that can be used to screen you out. Bias is an unfortunate fact of life and you want to supply as little information that could prejudice a screener against your résumé as possible. This is not to say that people will use such information against you, just that the prudent course is not to give anyone that opportunity if you can help it.

What to prune?
One of the biggest dilemmas in creating a résumé is what to leave out. If you omit certain information, is it lying? How much can you stretch or pad your résumé and still be telling the truth? How do you address a hiatus in paid employment? What do you say about getting fired?

The two most basic rules of résumé writing are: 1) never ever lie or even exaggerate and 2) if the information is not related to your ability to do the job you are applying for, you may leave it out. The first is simply common sense: somewhere in your employment career you may run into someone who went to the university you lied about attending, an HR rep may do a background check, or someone may expect you to do things your résumé would indicate you can do…and you can’t. Don’t dig a hole for yourself…tell the truth. The second point is also common sense: unless you are fresh out of school and have never had a job, it is virtually impossible to fit everything about your work and education history on that one single page that is the Holy Grail of résumés. That means there is no way you can avoid leaving some things out, so you must carefully select the facts that best represent your suitability for the job and omit the rest.

What to include?
Anything that helps show you are qualified and capable of doing the job for which you are applying. That includes both paid and unpaid experience, as well as relevant education, including seminars and workshops. You don’t need to include addresses and telephone numbers of former employers, the names of your former supervisors, your reasons for leaving or your references. Bring all this information with you and hand it to the interviewer at the end of your interview: it will make you look both professional and well-prepared and it won’t clutter up your résumé with unnecessary information. It also won’t give the employer the opportunity to contact your references and former supervisors and quiz them before interviewing you…a bad situation even if you have glowing references because now you have to live up to (or down) what somebody has said about you.

It is like an advertising flyer…and you are the product
Remember, a résumé is not intended to get you a job or serve as an exhaustive chronology of your school and work history. The purpose of a résumé is to generate enough interest in you to get the employer to call you in for an interview. Too little relevant information and they aren’t interested; too much information and they don’t need to interview you to rule you out.

You need to put a lot of information in front of the screeners in a very brief time. That means making the layout reader-friendly with short bursts of words rather than long paragraphs. It means avoiding repetition, even if your jobs have all been basically the same. It means a structure that lends itself to quick scanning rather than slowing down to actually read. If you have the qualifications for the job and can put them in front of the screener in a format that is concise, easily skimmed, and packed with information, your chances of getting that interview skyrocket.

Next: analyzing your résumé: find the good, change the bad, throw out the ugly.

You can find more of Sweet Violet at http://sweetvioletsa.blogspot.com/ and http://svcooks.blogspot.com/

by: Sweet Violet

Tags: a good resume, CV, getting that interview, great resumes, help with resume, job hunting, job interview, job seeking, looking for a job, resume, resume help, resume writing, unemployed, unemployment

2 Responses to “Surviving a soft economy”