Why Is Your Resume Still The Key Document To You Getting Your Next Job?

To answer this question we need to know some history

Don’t take for granted that you’ll never have to worry about your job

The days of having a job for life are long gone

It’s all about managing the ‘brand of you’ and being interview ready at any time

Whether you work as a ‘permanent’ staff member or a contractor - you’re only ever your notice period away from being dumped into a sea of job seekers

And can you afford to be out of work for a few months?

How long can you survive on your savings?

The bills won’t stop... but the money just did… the world stopped right now…

To understand why you must be interview ready, let’s have a look at how we got to the state where a hiring manager rejects or latches onto your resume in under 6 seconds

Many hiring managers are over 50 and if they’re not, then someone they’re reporting to has grey hair – that’s just a fact

Many started recruiting when jobs were advertised in newspapers

They responded to each resume by snail mail because there were usually less than 10 to 15 applicants

Recruiters took the time to re-write the top candidates resumes before presenting them to the client because they had the time and could afford to do so

They got paid a lot of money to place a candidate so they took the time to present their candidate as the stand-out, all-star candidate for the role

They showcased their candidate

Then email replaced snail mail and online ads replaced newspaper ads

Remember we had the same managers working in the same roles – only now the technology had changed

Job seekers had access to jobs all across the country, or the world if they chose to pursue international opportunities

It became easier and faster to apply for jobs

All you did was press ‘SEND’ and your application was done

Within seconds it was in the inbox of the person who decides if you’re worth an interview or not

This created a dramatic increase in job applicants

The tens became hundreds, even thousands in some cases

Some applicants were suitable, many were not, but how did the recruiter figure this out without wading through hundreds of resumes?

Senior management remembers the days of 10-15 resumes so they’re putting pressure on their staff to do more with less

So recruiters are forced to scan resumes – they look for the secret resume language the good candidates know and pick those candidates

Are you starting to see why some people get that juicy interview and jump from job to job whenever they wish?

It doesn’t matter how good you are at your job - you may be the best at what you do

But someone else gets promoted ahead of you or jumps to the next job whenever they wish because they know the secret resume language that recruiters and hiring managers look for

So..

My 20+ year career as a Corporate Hiring Manager let me hire people for high profile projects in top tier companies

I saw some awful resumes and that was after the recruiters’ first cull

This told me recruiters were so swamped they no longer had the time to invest in re-drafting their candidate’s resume

They did quick updates (usually they put your resume into their company format and that’s it) and then sent it along with a summary of the candidate (you)

And recruiters confirmed to me that most resumes have always been awful

They rarely give the right information, they don’t have keywords to show up in keyword matches and they are simply plain boring

Very few pop enough to make a hiring manager say ‘this is someone I have to meet’

Then we have to work out if the applicant would make our jobs easier or harder – would we hire them or not?

What hiring managers want is reassurance that we are not going to regret our decision to hire you

That means we want to meet someone who shows us the value they bring, rather than rattle off a list of things they did in their day-to-day responsibilities

What we’re looking for is you knowing the value you’ve added, you knowing your strengths, being aware of your weaknesses and being able to clearly articulate the value you bring

People who value themselves exude more than just confidence

They exude pride in giving their personal best to themselves and to others and that is worth its weight in gold to any hiring manager

You know your recruiter won’t update your resume for you, so it’s up to you to invest the time and energy to get this important document right

Invest The Time And Money To Get It Right