The Recruiter's Perspective

Job hunters who email their resumes to employers may be doing more than just saving on postage. They also will have a clear advantage over more traditional job hunters for the same position. According to recent surveys of recruiters and HR professionals, the number of hiring managers who prefer to receive resumes electronically has shot up to 98% in just five years. Nearly 90% of the executives surveyed prefer the email route compared to snail mail.

Perhaps the speed with which business is conducted and labor shortages are making employers more decisive. In 1998, for example, 64% of respondents had no preference in how they received a job candidate’s resume. By 2000, only 19% expressed similar indifference. By 2002, it was hard to find a company that doesn’t prefer having resumes emailed according to iLogos Research.

By 2004, those receiving resumes electronically have become fussy about how they locate job candidates. While most opted for the large job boards in recent years like Monster, HotJobs, and CareerBuilder, recruiters are increasingly beefing up their client companies’ career sections on the Internet to offer full service online applications and personal agents when new job openings are available. These career sections usually contain complete information about the job description, corporate climate, and benefits that employees enjoy. In addition, recruiters are turning to professional association websites that often have career sections. Next, niche job sites have become popular as recruiters increasingly try to avoid having to sort through thousands of generic resumes that job boards send them.

First of all, let’s review the general rules for writing a resume, whether it’s electronic or traditional. A savvy resume follows certain rules that increase the possibility that the resume will be read. Most of these rules relate to a series of deadly resume errors reported by employers. The most common mistakes occur when job candidates fail to keep the purpose of their resume in mind. Most errors kill a resume even before it is fully read. The resume is literally "dead upon arrival." At best, these errors leave negative impressions that are difficult to overcome at this or any other point in the hiring process.

So, as a job hunter, you must concentrate, instead, on providing ample evidence for being considered for a job interview. To ensure that your resume will make it to an interviewer’s hands, avoid these most 20 common resume errors reported by employers:

1. A resume that is not related to the employer’s interests or needs with experience irrelevant to the position under consideration. This means that you need to customize your resume, the cover letter, and your career objective for each job that you’re applying for.

2. A resume that is too long, short, or condensed. One of the biggest advantages of an electronic resume is that the traditional 2-page limit is useless. Capitalize on your experiences by telling short stories about your successes, not just your time on a job.

3. Poorly designed format and an unattractive appearance in the resume. This is very important in building an electronic resume because you have no idea what the size of the monitor of the recruiter who will be looking at your resume. Keep your margins very wide. Use only simple document formatting and a basic font.

4. Misspellings, bad grammar, and wordiness are killers. Use your spell and grammar checker before sending anything. Send your electronic resume to a friend to edit it before sending it to a potential employer.

5. Poor punctuation distracts a recruiter from concentrating on your experiences, skills, and talents. Use very little punctuation or fancy bullets in your electronic resume

6. Lengthy phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that are hard to follow. Use a separate keyword section to emphasize your technical and people skills. You can find keywords in the job description and the company website. Use your word processing thesaurus for additional words.

7. Too slick, amateurish, or "gimmicky" resume formats. Use the templates for professional electronic resumes that can be found in Microsoft Word.

8. Too boastful or dishonest descriptions will hurt. A little puffing about your accomplishments is okay, but make sure that you can document all of your accomplishments, education, certifications, memberships, etc.

9. Critical categories, experience, and skills are omitted accidentally. There is a peculiar amnesia that overcomes job hunters of any age. They tend to minimize their skills and achievements for some strange reason. Ask your mother, minister, spouse, and/or lifelong friend to reinforce all your wonderful qualities and attainments and incorporate them, where applicable, into your resume.

10. Poorly organized career history, hard to understand experience that require too much interpretation. Decide from the beginning whether you’re going to send a functional resume that emphasizes your recent experiences or a traditional chronological one. Most employers prefer functional resumes that are targeted to the job description.

11. Unexplained time gaps send up red flags. Be honest about layoffs or firings that you’ve had. In this day and age, employers have come to expect some gaps. They’ve probably had some themselves. Describe why these gaps occurred and what you did during the interim. An employer will be impressed if you took a sabbatical for more education, cared for a baby or elderly family member, volunteered in an organization, took an internship in a new field that you wanted to explore, etc.

12. Not conveying your accomplishments or a pattern of performance from which the reader can predict future performance. Your objective should explain succinctly what you’ve already achieved and what your aspirations are so the recruiter will clearly understand the flow in your resume of experiences.

13. Experience and expertise that does not support your stated objective. This is why it’s very important to customize each resume you submit so that your experiences emphasize your objective.

This is where the value of references comes in. You should provide them a copy of your customized resume, the job description you’re applying for, and ideas re how you’d like them to respond so they can verify specific experiences and expertise you have. Give each of your references weekly updates re your job search — whether it’s going well or not. And when you get your new job, be sure to thank them personally and offer to help them in their own possible job search.

14. Unclear or vague career objective puts off most recruiters. Too often I read platitude statements that job hunters write such as "proven professional who wants the opportunity to grow." Carefully read the job description and paraphrase it in your objective.

15. Lacking credibility and content that includes lots of fluff and "canned" resume language. This is a particular "sin" for young workers who don’t have much prior experience. It’s better to focus on your "people skills" such as experience in teams, oral and written communication skills, customer service focus, regular attendance at your former positions, critical problem solving skills, and computer savvy. More and more, employers are asking for employees who can demonstrate what they will do, not just on what they know.

16. Appearing over-qualified or under-qualified for the position. Do your research on the company by using Vault or Hoovers as well as reading every page of the company’s website. Online business journals, Fortune magazine, industry publications, competitor companies’ websites, trade association websites, and Forbes also have a wealth of information for you to determine whether the company is right for you and whether you’ll be joining at a level where you’ll be challenged appropriately.

17. Including a photo and personal information, such as height, weight, race, marital status, and age. HR folks are scared stiff of being involved in discrimination suits. They are not allowed to know your race and age so don’t give it to them. This means that you should remove dates of your previous employment.

18. Lacking sufficient contact information (i.e., telephone or fax number) or appears somewhat anonymous (uses a P.O. Box for an address). Use any one of the popular free email services if you’re employed and have a company email address that you’d rather not reveal. Juno, rocket, hotmail, yahoo each have good email services for job hunters. Use a neutral email address. For example, "sweetandsassytammy@" may work with friends and family but NOT with potential employers!

19. Constantly referring to "I" and therefore appearing self-centered; failing to clearly communicate what he or she will likely do for the employer. Incorporate into your comments about your previous employment 3-5 short bulleted case studies re how you reduced costs or improved productivity.

20. Including "red flag" information such as being fired or incarcerated, confessing health or performance problems, or stating salary figures, including salary requirements that may be too high or too low. These are very convenient reasons for your resume to hit the electronic bit basket!

If you have a something negative in your work history or background, don’t assume that this issue won’t come up. Employers are very conscientious about checking your references and doing background checks. Be prepared to answer questions about this negative item candidly in your interview.

Don’t state your salary requirement even if the ad asks for them. However, be prepared to answer that question at an interview, after you’ve researched salary ranges. Check out salary information on a city and regional level by researching the Bureau of Labor Statistics latest information. Also check the company’s website for information about benefits. If you don’t need one that the company is offering, you may have a bargaining chip to increase your initial salary.

After avoiding these 20 deadly sins, here’s what your electronic resume should look like:

Personal information: Write your name and email address.

Objective: Write a specialized objective for this particular job.

Keywords: Use nouns, verbs, and short phrases to describe your experiences, people skills, educational background, etc. Separate each of them with a space. Use up to 50 keywords.

Experiences: Write short phrases about each of your previous job experiences and emphasize your accomplishments in boosting productivity or reducing costs.

Other information: Note your computer skills, foreign languages, personal interests, certificates, licenses, memberships and involvement in professional organizations, etc.

References: Note that these will be available upon request. Be sure to have your references ready to provide letters of support.

When you’re ready to send your customized resume, be sure to save a copy of it in a separate file by a name that you’ll remember is connected to a particular job opening. That way you can refer to that particular resume when someone calls you for further information or when you’re at the interview.

To: the email address in the job posting

Subject: Write out what the job description is

Body of the email: Include a short cover letter in the body of the email that describes which position you’re applying for and how it closely matches your career objective.

DO NOT ATTACH YOUR RESUME; simply copy and paste it below your cover letter.

Signature: Use a signature file that includes your email address and phone number.

You may have thought before reading this article that the Internet would make it SO easy to conduct an effective job search. In fact, it now takes considerable time, energy, and creativity to develop a resume that will stand out.

Best of luck in avoiding these 20 deadly sins. You’re sure to find an exceptional new career if you do!"

Now you can say that you indeed have walked in a recruiter's shoes! Send me your favorite niche job boards and professional association websites that offer job openings so I can share them with other readers. All the best in your job search this month.

Sincerely,
Jane M. Lommel, Ph.D.
jlommel@WorkforceAssociates.com

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