Old-fashioned principles can be applied to today's digital resumes.
Much of what your mum's and dad's high school counselors taught them about job hunting still holds true.
You're still selling yourself for a particular type of work, and you must still make your qualifications crystal-clear.
But it's not your mum's and dad's job market any more. Your resume will go nowhere if the hiring manager does not see within 30 seconds that you have what they're looking for. And that's if they still bother with paper resumes.
Network Computing magazine research indicates that as of 1995, more than 50 percent of large and medium organisations (500 to 5,000-plus employees) used automated applicant tracking systems. A smaller employer might subscribe to a scanning service in lieu of a proprietary system. According to Rebecca Smith, author of Electronic Resumes and Online Networking: How to Use the Internet to do a Better Job Search (Career Press, 1999), if you are applying at a company with more than 100 employees, there is a high chance that the recruiter will scan your resume.
Your premium-stock, typographically enhanced resume will likely be fed into an optical scanning system, converted into a digital image, and transmogrified into a database-friendly series of keywords that can be searched and plucked at will by Those Who Would Hire You.
The No. 1 rule will never change: You are composing a resume for the sole purpose of getting an interview. But being electronically reduced to so many ones and zeros, you may take now this advice more seriously than ever: Make yourself noticeable.
Scannable, searchable, uploadable
Your resume should be formatted for easy and accurate computer scanning, available in an easy-to-read file format, and full of appropriate keywords for database searching.
But beware: Many employers find that a major limitation of scanning is data loss due from poor text quality, formatting, and paper condition. Now your resume must appear sharp for both human and digital eyes. Joe Grimm, recruiting and development editor at the Detroit Free Press, has some suggestions.
- Use plain white paper. Dark paper can make your resume nearly impossible to scan. If you want to go with a distinctive paper stock, stick with white but go with something on the heavy side.
- Use black print, 12 points or larger. Colored inks generally don't look very professional, anyway.
- Don't use boldface or italic type. It drives scanners batty. Instead, use columns and spacing to emphasize or categorize key points.
- Don't use vertical type.
- Don't use underlines or borders. Extraneous features add little to a resume, anyway.
- Do not use clip art.
The trick is to keep it simple. Eric Tomanek, a former employee of HR technology developer Resumix, says that a manual review is conducted to reject resumes that won't scan because of physical qualities, or because they contain personal data like birthdates, Social Security numbers, or photographs.
Old-fashioned relevant information
Just as Mom and Dad learned, profiling your skills, experience, and education up front is essential. It's important to include information about the jobs you've held and the most relevant accomplishments, skills, and experience. Do some research. The more you know about the employer and the position you claim to be interested in, the better you can tailor your resume to fit the job.
There are several methods of organizing yourself, whether on paper or on screen.
- Chronological resumes are organized by job titles, starting with the most recent. According to Smith, employers who read paper resumes prefer this form for easy skimming. It's suited to job seekers with experience and a career history that follows a linear course. Those whose career paths more resemble a winding country road will find this resume difficult to write.
- Functional resumes rearrange job history into sections that highlight areas of skill and accomplishment. Smith recommends you make it easy for employers to visualize your accomplishments. The functional resume let you match up skills and achievements that may not be obvious in a chronological format.
- A curriculum vitae is sometimes required for certain educational and research positions. It's a long, detailed description of your education, work history, projects, awards, and any work you may have published. For a mid-career candidate, this may fill more than a dozen pages. Ask around in your field, or consult an adviser to find out if this format is appropriate.
Keywords
Paper-based resumes focus on aesthetics. The eyeball-grabbing secret used to be strong verbs. Now, nouns are all the rage. Use phrases that highlight technical and professional areas of expertise, industry jargon, special projects, achievements, and other features of your work history. Load your resume with keywords, but be selective. Organize the content to make those keywords pop out no matter who or what is reading it.
If you use the right keywords, you may end up on an employer's short list.
Beam it up
It may be to your advantage to forget paper altogether. As Internet and database technologies converge, sexier applicant tracking systems can take emailed resumes and transfer them directly into a database without scanning.
Email attachments in word-processor or encoded formats are generally a no-no. If you're lucky, the company will respond to tell you that you goofed.
If you send your resume as an attachment, the safest formats are ASCII and rich text format. If appearance is important, attach your resume to an email as an RTF; otherwise, ASCII is just fine. Not all email editors support RTF, though, so ask before you send.
You may be able to strike a compromise between looks and transferability with HTML. Hypertext resumes can integrate smart verbal development with basic page design strategies.
Sometimes, a company will want you to upload your resume directly their corporate Web site. Then they'll format your data to fit their needs. In this case, forget about aesthetics.
All you need to do is guarantee your resume's retrievability once it enters the electronic sea of candidates.
