This was the topic of a recent online posting I read authored by the owner of a prestigious recruitment firm.
Being a professional resume writer who gets resumes sent to me from job seekers who want to hire me and talks directly with 5-10 people a day responding to my offer to critique resumes at no charge, in all honesty I can see where the writer is coming from.
I agree that for an employer to judge whether to interview or reject a candidate on the basis of a resume is not the optimal way to select the best candidates for a job. However I also know with the sheer volume of job seekers on the market this is the way the winnowing process works ever since I have been in the career services arena.
Taking this to heart, job seekers, recruiters and especially resume writers must learn how to work within the system to the best of their abilities because no matter how much we disagree with its merits the system will not be replaced in the foreseeable future.
In his post Bob Corlett makes two points worthy of mention. First he contends that every day his firm sends highly qualified, pre-screened resumes to hiring managers but, he laments, hiring managers often glance at the document for a few seconds and declare “I have no interest in seeing that candidate.” His contention is that at that moment all the hiring managers can envision is some unqualified person wasting an hour of their precious time”, and for them the act of rejecting the candidate based on the resume seems like a time saver … except, Bob says, “its not!”
In Bob’s world this is a valid point because firms like his with top notch leadership and supporting personnel spend considerable time vetting hundreds of candidates for a job before they forward a resume to an employer. Therefore, in theory the resumes they submit should not be judged strictly on face value; employers should look at them with a much more open mind. The problem as I see it is that people in the recruitment business who are not as thorough and scrupulous as Bob’s staff make it harder for employers to know who’s valued opinion to trust. Consequently the bad apples in this group, even if they are the minority, end up ruining the credibility of others and employers rely on their own instincts to make decisions based on the face value of the resume at hand.
Now let’s look at the other side of the equation; when a resume is submitted blindly to an employer by a job seeker. Most resumes I see are so poorly written that the person who is screening them is well within their right to envision an unqualified person attempting to waste their precious time, even if the person is really a top flight candidate, and most decision makers I know go with their gut feeling derived from the resume’s first impression. This is true for most employers and for recruiters like Bob and his peers and competitors as well.
Bob’s second point is he feels “that actually the problem is not with the resume.”
He writes that “the problem is that most hiring managers ask themselves the wrong question when they look at resumes” He opines that “managers ask resumes to answer the question “Has this person already proven they are qualified?” In his opinion “a resume can’t prove anything, it can only hint at it.” He thinks that hiring managers and HR professionals are narrowing their focus and are ruling out too many qualified candidates by relying on a resume to select or weed out candidates and rather than saving time he feels they are prolonging the job vacancy.
This point I do not agree with.
First off I think the people screening resumes are within their right to ask if the person has proven if they can do the job and similarly pointed questions; and the good ones do when they review a resume. Conversely the top resume writers today are skilled at anticipating the questions employers should be asking and we are extremely talented in answering these questions for them in writing.
So whether the resume is submitted by a recruiter or a candidate, employers are going to continue to read, screen and judge the candidate’s viability the same as before. This is why job seekers must anticipate what questions the decision maker wants answered and make sure they are answered to the reader’s satisfaction.
About Perry Newman:
Perry Newman CPC/CSMS is a nationally recognized career services professional – an executive resume writer and career transition coach, certified social media strategist, AIPC certified recruiter, and an original member of the Career Rocketeer team.
Perry is passionate about all things related to career management and is dedicated to helping people get hired and back to work ASAP in today’s marketplace where the average job search lasts 285 days.
As a resume writer he understands how a resume is perceived and therefore how it should be written. He is best known for choosing the perfect style and format to make a candidate standout in a crowd and identifying their key selling points and artfully integrating them into their resume, bio and dossier.
As a coach and social media strategist he helps individuals including CXO’s, professionals and career changers in all fields to understand and master the job search process form A to Z. He coaches and mentors them on relevant topics such as understanding the role of social media in a job search, developing and using a network to get known and generate interviews, how and where to submit a resume and cover letter, as well as how to interview for a job, and evaluate and negotiate a job offer.
As a recruiter he has long standing contacts with employers and other recruiters in numerous fields can introduce you to decision makers seeking top talent in the continental USA.
For a no cost/no obligation critique of your resume and Linked-In page you are invited to email your resume to perry@perrynewman.com
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