Carl Bradford

Archive for the ‘Resumes’ Category

The short answer is they don’t.  They scan your resume with a very specific set of data in their mind and if they determine your resume matches this data only then will they decide to actually read your resume.

I’ve personally reviewed probably at least a million resumes in my 40+ years in this business.  When you review 50 to 200 resumes per day, they add up and at this volume, it would be impossible to “read” each of them and it isn’t necessary for me to do so.

If you’re a candidate, you may still get angry about that, but at least I’m going to explain the reality of what happens with your resume in this article to help understand why it’s done this way.

I know that candidates often get angry about the way their resume is quickly dismissed, but they are often to blame for not preparing their resume to be the best it can be.

Check your resume against my top 9 “knock out” criteria below to see how your resume stacks up.

The Recruiter Scan Process Revealed

Here’s how I process the resumes I review every day and the criteria I use to move some to the “no interest” group and the others into “follow up.”

I set up a hierarchy of certain “must haves” or you’re out, so at first I’m really just box checking. These must haves are what the job spec calls for. If you’re reading a job posting and your resume doesn’t match the stated criteria – and it isn’t easily and quickly apparent – then goodbye.

Generally, 80% of the time these must haves are my knock out blows. There are exceptions to each of these, but I’m dealing with the 80/20 rule. This is box checking, if I see any one of these as I scan your resume you will be excluded.

The 9 Critical Resume Knockout Blows

Location. If you’re not local to the job, I immediately know the process takes on an added cost to my client and becomes much more complex. This includes the physical move, housing, temporary lodging, possible spousal employment, and schools to name a few. All things being equal, clients will opt for local candidates. I don’t make this a knock out factor right away, but neither does it fall into the plus column. This takes about 1 second.

Functional resume. The most common reason for a functional resume is to hide something and I know that all too well. It raises a red flag and I rarely pay much attention at all to a functional resume at first and just quickly skip to the lower third of the resume to glance at your work history.  Unless I see something compelling, you’re gone. Another big, big disadvantage is what I call “trend over time”, i.e. trying to get a sense of your job progression.  Are you moving steadily upward, or have you hit a plateau or have you actually gone backwards.  This is impossible to tell from a functional resume because titles can’t adequately tell your story. About 5 seconds.

Top one-third. I review the information just after your contact data. Don’t bother with putting an objective on your resume.  I’m not looking to see what you want to do, I’m looking to see if you fit my open jobs.

Don’t fill this valuable real estate with soft skills either. Give me your best elevator pitch in a Summary section and make sure it maps/ties to the job. This more than anything else will slow me down and start changing me from scanning to reading.  If you don’t have a concise summary then I usually just skip anything else written in any other format, at least on the first pass (and likely my first and only pass through your resume). About 10-15 seconds to give me a reason to slow down and read.

Job stability. You hear a lot about “no more gold watches” and no more loyalty and therefore job stability doesn’t matter.  Wrong!  It doesn’t matter as much as it use to, but it still matters.  If you’ve changed jobs every 2-3 years, why would my client think you’re going to stay with them any longer?  And at a hiring cost that can be one-and-a-half times your base salary (150%), they do care and so do I.  About 10 seconds tops.

Level. If you’ve been at a VP and above level and now applying to a Manager or Director level, I get very cautious very quickly. I next try to determine the size of your employer and the scope of your role.  If you’ve been a VP at a larger Fortune employer, and now want to be a Manager at that same size or smaller company (and if you’re now unemployed especially) I will move on. Takes about 5-10 seconds.

Missing data. If you’ve left off your earlier job history, that can be a big red flag.  When I get to the end of your job history and see a job title that is inconsistent with the level of job where you would have started your career, I know right away you’re hiding something.  While you may not provide as much detail about your earliest employment, I really have to be convinced by everything else before I’ll bother to take time to talk with you. About 5 seconds.

Role. If you’ve been doing a job that has little or no relevancy to the job you applied for, you’re gone in less than a few heart beats. If I’m looking for sales, you’d better have had sales experience. Recruiters like me are paid to find specific experience and I know better than to try to provide my clients with anything less than what they’ve asked for. About 5 seconds to make this determination.

Industry. This isn’t always critical, but often it is. If your experience has all been in banking and the opportunity I’m recruiting for happens to be in aerospace AND requires specific knowledge that would only come from being employed in the aerospace industry, don’t send your resume.  I’ll spot it in about 5 – 10 seconds and your resume moves to the “not a match” category.

Education. Like it or not, most employers have defined their optimum and minimum educational standards. While I often disagree with them, I know they’re firmly set on this criteria and it’s my job to give it to them.  This can sometimes include certain certifications as well. I can determine that in about 5 seconds and if you don’t have them, you go into the “not a match” group.

After all this, 80 – 100% of the resumes have been eliminated. If there are any left, then I will take the time to actually read them in detail.

What You Can Do About It

I’ve written extensively on the subject of resumes and have 15 free videos on a companion site, Essential Resume Strategies.  I encourage you to go there and spend the time to review this information.

Job titles, or what some call “role titling”, can often improve the chances of attracting, retaining and rewarding top performers, especially when resources and bonus pools are underfunded as many are in today’s economy.

You don’t believe it?

Actually, a survey by Peal Meyer & Partners just surveyed 388 companies that indicated job titles are more important in times like these; i.e. times of economic stress.

The survey delt with issues such as “formal job titles” as well as a secondary title that is more specific to a particular individual’s responsibility.  The survey also reported that this seems to apply less so to senior levels of management where consistency is considered more critical.

So what are some ramifications of all of this?

For one, having a title on your business card that is specifically representative of what your role is, can be beneficial even though the official company records might have a more formal and generic job title.

For example, let’s say your official title is Engineering Fellow (usually meaning you have deep engineering subject matter expertise in a specific discipline) and your role is specifically leading the R&D initiative for new fuel cell technology.  In that case a business card and correspondence title that reflected this role would become much clearer to everyone.  For example it might read, Manager Fuel Cell Technology Development or Director Fuel Cell R&D.

This same rule also is true for titles on resumes.

Job titles often cause confusion for readers of resumes.  Recruiters and hiring managers who read resumes often let the job titles influence whether or not they’re interested enough to pursue an interview.  They often make generic, unfounded assumptions about an individual just by the choice of job titles they include on their resume.

An individual should always be truthful when creating their resume but also be practical at the same time.  If your official job title is Accountant III, but your role is really the lead cost accountant for your group, then say so.  Show your title as Lead Cost Accountant.

The intent here isn’t to deceive, but to communicate.

And for you recruiters and hiring managers, stop reading so much into job titles.  I agree that sometimes a job title can be accurate in indicating the size and scope of a person’s current or past role, but this isn’t always the case.

Take time instead to actually have a phone discussion with someone who has the right background and get the real facts on size and scope of current/past roles and find out just what the person wants in their next role.

Far too many hiring decisions are based on “reading the tea leaves” of resume content.

A huge number of people search for sample resume objectives every day, and every day that leads to many, many resumes getting rejected and fewer interviews for those that use them.

I have just published a video that discusses why.  See what to substitute for a resume objective statement by viewing this video.

You worked hard on your resume format, and visited a number of online sources to learn how to write a resume, looked at the most popular resume examples and samples.  You considered online resume builder software solutions during your resume preparation.  You feel like you’ve covered all the important bases as you learned how to make a resume that you’re comfortable with.

Now you feel confident you have the best resume format possible.   You even saved the resume as an Adobe PDF document to protect all your nice formatting.

Applying to the great job with your new resume

Your resume just arrived via email to that great job post you found a few minutes ago.  You know, the one that reads like it was hand tailored just for you.

Andy, the company recruiter has just arrived to begin work, sits down at his desk, turns on his computer and logs in to review all the resumes now sitting in his electronic in-box.  Your resume is among those he is scheduled to review.

He takes a sip of coffee, clicks his mouse and the resume reviews begin.  How will your resume stack up?

Finally he gets to your resume and opens it for review. What he sees is a completely wrecked format.  Spaces between paragraphs have been removed, there are some odd characters in place of those nice bullet points, information in columns and tables are now completed scrambled.  He can’t make heads or tails of your resume.  Frustrated and with only a few seconds (no more than about 30 seconds), to spend on each resume before deciding whether or not to continue his review, he moves your resume into the  reject stack.

You’ve just experienced a resume failure.

What happened behind the scene to your resume

Here’s what happened to you.  Technology “ate your resume.”

Many employers do not receive your resume via email, instead your resume is parased into their ATS (Applicant Tracking System).  In other words, technology interpreted your resume formatting and attempted to put it into a readable form within the ATS so it could be read easily by the recruiter and then managed much like a sales professional manages customer profiles within their customer relationship management system.

While not all ATS will scramble your resume like this, many will.  The trouble is, you have no way of knowing if the recruiter for that great job is using one that is user friendly to your resume or not.

The solution is never to use a resume format that runs the risk of getting abused by technology.  There are best resume formats that are safe to use and will avoid your resume going into that dreaded “resume black hole.”

This problem is aggreviated by the fact that most professional resume writers don’t have the behind the scene background that I do.  You’ll understand why when you read my bio.

You can find out just which format is the best resume format by viewing my FREE resume videos at my companion web site: Essential Resume Strategies.

Maybe you’re in this story, or one just like it.

It was 8:30 AM as Julie the Sr. Recruiter got her first copy of coffee and sat down to begin her day.

Julie had just opend three new jobs the night before and got them posted on the Internet before leaving for the day.  Now, she was anxious to see how many new resume responses were already in her in-box, but before she could get to that, she clicked over to her calendar for the day.

Looks like she had about 30 minutes before her first phone interview and then three more before 11 AM.  After that she was scheduled to meet with Bill the VP of Engineering to discuss a series of new job vacancies he was about to open.  Next she had a working lunch planned with the Director of Talent Management.

For the afternoon, three more phone interviews and one in-person interview.

Now for the in-box of resumes – your resume is among them because you applied last night. You’re excited about the prospects of this job opportunity, it looks like a great match and with a company you’d really like to work for.  You plan to give this employer a couple of days before you follow-up, just to be sure they have time to read your resume.

Now back to Julie.

After the calendar check she opens her in-box – oops three internal emails that are urgent, so these will take priority.  Whew, now that’s out of the way, on to reviewing the resumes.

Before Julie begins working down through the stack of resumes she glances at her watch…darn, only 15 minutes available for that first phone interview.  Determined, she begins to review the resumes faster and faster trying to get through as many as possible before 9 am.

After another 7 minutes, and she finally comes to your resume.  She opens it and begins a quick glance at the top half of your resume.  She notes which job you applied for and immediately within her head a pre-recorded message begins playing.  That message is the criteria she will use to quickly move your resume into the Yes or No stack.  You’ve got no more than 30 seconds to connect with the message playing inside her head.

Twenty seconds into your resume and she quickly moves it into the No stack and opens the next resume.

What went wrong?  Based on the job posting you know it’s a close match.

It’s a resume failure.  Your resume didn’t connect with the message playing inside Julie’s head.  The clues for what your resume needed to communicate were available, but you didn’t pick up on them or maybe you just didn’t know where to find them.  Your resume – which is your marketing brochure when you’re not there in person to fill in the gaps – failed.

You’ve fallen victim to the single biggest reason that candidates don’t get invited into the interview process.

Don’t let this story be yours.  Learn how to connect with the message inside the reader’s head.  Unfortunately this story happens all day long, every day and it doesn’t have to be that way.

It’s also unfortunate that recruiters are stretched just this thin in most companies these days.  That means your resume has to be great – not just good!

Go to Essential Resume Strategies for 15 FREE resume videos that help you create a resume that vastly increases the odds for you to get an interview.