Unbeatable Resumes (3 page)

60 percent of the third parties who review a résumé have
no direct experience
with the job they are recruiting for. Rather, they are relying on information given to them by someone else.

40 percent of résumés that are “opened” to be read are deleted because the reader isn't clear about what kind of job the person has done, who the applicant has worked for, and how successful the person has been.

Additionally, most people imagine that companies fill most of their job openings within one to two months. In reality, the average time is more like four or five months.

The average résumé gets read in ten seconds. On top of this, there are at least 100 résumés received for every job posted to the public. Even if a hiring authority decides to read
all
of the résumés him-or herself, the odds of yours surfacing to the top aren't great.

If you have been looking for a job for a while, and you have sent your résumé to many companies, you may have asked yourself, “Why don't those people call me? I am an absolute perfect match for their jobs! What's wrong with them?”

Well, now you know. It is not likely your résumé even got
read
, and it's even less likely that it was read by the
right person
—the person feeling the pain. By “feeling the pain” I mean the person who needs to hire someone because, if someone isn't hired, he has to do the job himself.

Although it is easy to get discouraged when you hear all of this, if you follow the advice in this book you will significantly improve your odds of getting interviews. And, after all, it is better to be aware of what really goes on than to live in a fantasy world and be disappointed.

There's really not much you can do about the chaos that goes on in most companies, especially relating to the hiring process. At least by recognizing the relative mess you will be able to get your expectations in order—and you will realize that “it's not you.” And then, having a well-written résumé with a high probability of being read is a good first step toward breaking through that chaos. Of course, it's important to have an effective strategy for
using
your résumé to get an interview—because a great résumé is only as good as your ability to get the interview.

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YOUR RÉSUMÉ IS
not likely to get you hired; rather, its purpose is to get you a face-to-face audience with an interviewing or hiring authority. That is, your résumé is a
sales tool
that says to an interviewing or hiring authority: “You need to interview me because I have been a good employee [or student]. I've been successful before and I will be successful for you.” It's that simple.

The rule of thumb is this: As long as your résumé gets you interviews, you can use any format or style you like. But certain contents and formats have the
highest probability
of getting you interviews, based on my thirty-eight years of experience. I begin the chapter with a discussion of some initial considerations—things you should and should
not include when preparing to write your résumé. Then I get down to the basics—the reverse chronological format and its elements. And I conclude with a pointed discussion of other ways to put together a winning résumé.

Let's get started with some fundamentals.

Be sure the content of your résumé is on a level any high school senior could understand. In other words, the person looking at your résumé should be able to easily understand exactly who you have worked for, what that company does, what you have done there, how successful you have been, and what you could do for future employers if you were hired. Readers of a résumé will ask themselves, “Why should we interview this person?” And, since the average résumé is read in a matter of seconds, it had better be clear to readers why they need to read a little more deeply.

Similarly, stay away from squishy, meaningless, fluff statements like “Superb written and oral communication skills,” “highly motivated,” “great mentor,” and so on. If you are going to state your “superb written skills,” qualify this statement by backing it up with facts; for instance, “Rewrote three training manuals distributed corporate-wide.” Or, to document “oral communication skills,” you could state that you're responsible for weekly group presentations, training programs, motivational speeches, and so on.
Back up
the broad statements with illustrative
facts
.

Probably 99 percent of the résumés you submit will be sent via the Internet, so you need to know how images and information are read differently on-screen than when they are physically held. For example, keep in mind that:

People spend 39 percent less time looking at images and information online than they do when they are printed.

The average person looks first at the center of an online document and then moves around the screen to view other details. One study found that people have a tendency to scan the screen in search of content and that our eyes follow an F-shaped pattern, beginning in the middle, then going to the left, then up the left margin to the top, quickly scanning across text in search of the central nugget of information.

People have a tendency to read “down” a screen rather than across, looking for information.

People's reading online tends to be shallow, with more scanning and skimming. As one researcher put it, “The screen-based reading behavior is characterized by more time spent on browsing and scanning, key word spotting, one-time reading, nonlinear reading, and reading more selectively, while less time is spent on in-depth reading and concentrated reading.”

People are interrupted more when reading online and tend to “bounce” from one document or image to another.

Most people print out a résumé only if it looks good to them, and then they read it in more depth in printed form. But the first yes or no decision is made by viewing it online.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, has said that communication on the Web needs to be seamless, informal, immediate, personal, simple, minimal, and short. And with your résumé, it
especially
needs to be seamless, immediate, personal, simple, minimal, and short.