The modern 21st Century Resume vs. the old fashioned 20th Century Resume

[NickL28]

Originally Posted by Office Politics

The modern 21st Century Resume used in today's incredibly competitive job market for professional white collar jobs that required advanced education and experience:

Two pages long (in most cases unless you are just out of college)

Key Words linked specifically to the skills needed for the job for the Applicant Tracking Software

Social Network (LinkedIn) address listed

Accomplishment Statements vs. a list of tasks

Career Headline vs. a Career Objective

Statement of qualifications in bullets near the top

Written specific to an actual job

Able to be scanned by a computer and then if it passes that, ability to get sell yourself in a ten second scan

Shows how your knowledge and skills in technology have added valuable to previous employers and solved organizational challenges
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The old fashioned 20th Century Resume (still be used foolishly today)

Jam everything in to one page no matter how many jobs you have

No Key Words or skills list

Lists every task they did in every job

Career Objective

Subjective statements saying how wonderful you are

Written for jobs in general

Written with the expectation that the hiring manager will read it thoroughly.

and the job you are applying to has to match at least 90% to your current job especially industry, responsibilities and software expertise. god help you if you are either underemployed, have too many short term/contract positions or are unemployed

[RamenAddict]

Originally Posted by RoadWarrior12

1. The six second thing is untrue. If you're actually qualified for a position it'll get about 25-30 or more depending on the industry, etc.

2. Very rarely read on paper on a desk. Number of pages doesn't matter as much as readability.

Here's kind of a real-life example for you. I'm currently hiring for a zone manager position and not super thrilled with the local internal candidate pool, so I opened up the posting to external. Now, since the posting contains the word "manager" and a salary north of $90K, I get a fair number of applicants - 37 in 5 days from indeed, another 5 from our company website, 2 referrals and a stray one from monster.

Of these 45 resumes, there's probably 9-10 that are completely unqualified, just the result of someone shot gunning applications. It literally takes seconds to see that these are not candidates. The rest I read and look for the ones that jump out at me, then re-read the ones that I initially didn't put in the "interview" pile.

So, 10 seconds or so for the ones that are totally off, meaning headline/objective is completely different, experience is completely lacking, etc.

Resumes that hit ~50% of the "preferred" items and all of the requirements probably get closer to a minute.

The folks that think that the hiring process is an elimination game are totally wrong. There's not a single HM out there that wants to interview and staff a position. When I find a candidate that fits, this process is over and I can go back to doing my real job. Pages full of obvious garbage like the OP is suggesting usually end up in the "delete" folder.

In my field, 45 resumes is for a pretty noncompetitive job. You can easily get 100 or hundreds if not over 1000 for a really desirable position in the span of a week. It's just insane. I have one friend in a job I consider to be one most people would rather poke their eyes out than take, but it still managed to get 50 applications.

I think a lot of people still do the one-page resume because they've had it drilled into them that they are supposed to do that (at the old fashioned career development office that doesn't understand the realities of the 100-1000 application field), but then you read the resume and realize that there is nothing of detail in there that is going to help an applicant stand out over the 99 to 999 other applicants.