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Has anyone ever heard of employers trashing resumes all because it is not in the format they prefer? If this is indeed a practice, then that is truly sad. Format has no bearing on one's ability to do a job.
Actually, this is not true. One thing I look for is attention to detail and the ability to follow simple instructions. If I say "cut and paste your resume into the body of the email" and you send it as an attachment, then you failed the basic literacy test. (I do this sometimes when I'm going to be traveling while resumes are coming in--it's easier to read the content in the email on a Blackberry than to try to read an attachment.)
If I say send the resume attached as a Word Doc or PDF and you send it in some other format that I can't open with a single mouse click, I trash it. (I travel with a mini computer, and don't have 100 different software packages on it.) Why should I waste my time trying to figure out what oddball software you use, which might require a download to open when I've got 99 other resumess that made my life easy and followed directions?
If I specify that I want a cover letter with the resume and you only send the resume, you failed again and I'm not going to bother looking at the resume.
I don't really care all that much about the actual layout of the resume, as long as it's legible and not full of typos or grammatical errors, although I do have a preference for conciseness. For example if you've been an admin for your past three jobs, don't restate the same responsibilities with employer after employer, instead format it with your experience/skills as bullet points and then just list the names and dates of prior employers further down.
I actually care most about the cover letter. Are you able to express yourself clearly and concisely, providing information that makes me actually want to read your resume out of the pile of 300 in my in box?
For me, the cover letter is the 30 second elevator speech, and by far the most crucial part of the process. Send me a canned cover letter that doesn't address why you are the right person for this specific position and you'll be ignored--why should I pay attention to you when you aren't paying attention to me?
Worse yet, send it to our Director of HR or the President of the company trying to go around me, the hiring manager whose e-mail is specifically stated as where to send the resume, and it's probably going in the trash before it even gets to me.
Not "bashing" here, just giving the perspective of a hiring manager. The last three hires I made were two unemployed people over the age of 50, one currently employed under 30. I obviously don't discriminate, I hire the best person for the job, regardless of current employment status or age.
Employers-these are the individuals that are to blame. They are the ones who should be hiring but they are not. There is all this talk of them wanting to save money. For what? It is outrageous what is going on in this country. It is not fair to treat our citizens who are of working age like this. Something has to be done for them to start hiring again. I don't know what that is but we cannot let this country go down the wrong path. It is partially going down the wrong path due to employers unwillingness to hire. As I stated earlier, there are companies out there who can afford to hire people but they are not. The excuse they make is that they want to save money. SAVE MONEY? To benefit their pockets? This is OUTRAGEOUS!!!
There are far more employers who can't afford to create new jobs than there are those that can afford to do so.
While I'm not going to say there is anything wrong with a cover letter there are just to many people applying for jobs to waste ones time on a different cover letter for each position. From what you are asking you want someone to spend all kinds of time on a cover letter which in all odds is going to be thrown out due to the shear number of applicants. I shun cover letters and still was able to land a job. Its all a matter of opinion and what is good for you, someone else may not care about. My skills are on the resume. The cover letter to me is nothing but a session of BS on paper.
While I'm not going to say there is anything wrong with a cover letter there are just to many people applying for jobs to waste ones time on a different cover letter for each position. From what you are asking you want someone to spend all kinds of time on a cover letter which in all odds is going to be thrown out due to the shear number of applicants. I shun cover letters and still was able to land a job. Its all a matter of opinion and what is good for you, someone else may not care about. My skills are on the resume. The cover letter to me is nothing but a session of BS on paper.
It might depend on the type of job. Two of the last three hires I made were for sales and marketing positions where having a personality, creativity, and the ability to create compelling written communication is crucial. A resume doesn't give me a feel towards a persons abilities in that respect, therefore I require a cover letter. It didn't need to be a literary masterpiece, but it did need to show that an applicant had the ability to communicate persuasively and effectively. Otherwise they shouldn't be in that line of work.
I never require a cover letter for our skilled labor jobs, I'm more concerned with hard skills for those.
It might depend on the type of job. Two of the last three hires I made were for sales and marketing positions where having a personality, creativity, and the ability to create compelling written communication is crucial. A resume doesn't give me a feel towards a persons abilities in that respect, therefore I require a cover letter. It didn't need to be a literary masterpiece, but it did need to show that an applicant had the ability to communicate persuasively and effectively. Otherwise they shouldn't be in that line of work.
I never require a cover letter for our skilled labor jobs, I'm more concerned with hard skills for those.
Well that makes more sense to me then, I just saw you had the same thing written about cover letters in the Work and Employment forum as well while its not a bad thing I agree, I just dont think it is necessary for all types of positions.
It can be going on in other workplaces though. Further, I have some knowledge of it happening straight from the horses mouth. I cannot be convinced that some hiring managers do not bother reading resumes due to it not being the format they want, such as chronological. For the record I am not saying all hiring managers are this way, but some of them are.
Employers are absolutely to blame and anyone who denies that is probably one of the employers engaging in said nefarious activity. I'm not the only one who is sick of doing online psych-eval quizzes for jobs at restaurants. Whoever came up with this deserves a swift kick in the behind. But you right wingers wonder why alot of young people aren't working these days. Maybe if it wasn't so tough to get a job in the first place from all the barriers created things would be different.
If all of the the Fortune 1000 companies would simply stop whining, get off their "assets" and bring on as little as 500-1,000 new employees each over the next year, with no layoffs, that's a minimum of 500,000 new jobs. That would start a ripple effect that would end this recession by 2014.
Employers purpose is solely to run a business. Employment is a side effect of those efforts.
I understand that, but be reminded that there's a human cost to unemployment. The unemployed can't and won't just disappear. Either hire them or the government should make direct cash payments to citizens so they don't become homeless and can still feed their kids. That's actually been proposed.
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