Quick Tip: Resume Writing

As you can imagine, I receive a ton of resumes -- usually about 10-20 per day.  Nearly 100% of them are marketing related, and many of them are outstanding.  Honestly, it's humbling to deal with so many talented marketers.

But here's a tip:  Don't layout your resume in some fancy format and then save it to Adobe.  Some marketers do this in order to showcase their graphic design chops, but actually it hinders their job search.

Here's why:  All recruiters, both corporate and independents like me, use software to track our resumes.  It's a must.  And to "inhale" those resumes easily into our databases, the resume should be in Word format.  Our software won't inhale an Adobe document.  Ideally, your address should appear very simply at the top of the document like this example:

Mary Jones
24 Redwing Road
Hockeytown, MI  30345
Phone:  (425) 555-1212
Email:  Mary.Jones@EmailAddress.com

That way our software can populate the contact fields automatically.  Now, I will always go the extra mile to manually input resumes that don't square easily with my software.  But I imagine that other recruiters won't.  Take it from me:  Finding a good job is a numbers game.  You need to get broad coverage because even bad recruiters sometimes have great marketing searches.  And if you are not in their database -- they can't consider you for the position.  It's just like the old rule on little league raffle tickets:  YOU MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN.

Later, if you insist on showcasing your graphic design chops, take the fancy copy of your resume to the interview.  Or simply email a copy directly to the hiring manager (who won't have database issues).  Sure, it sucks to maintain two versions of your resume -- but that's how the "system" works.

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Q:  Need the number of a recruiter who "gets it?"
A:  Download Harry's contact info for future reference.

Comments

[ben]

If your resume is about 2 or 3 pages, make sure you add SUMMARY on top. Normally, busy recruiters scan through all submitted resumes, actually they don't read word by word at first. The upper half of the page is where applicants can catch the recruiters attention. I would suggest you put the SUMMARY on the top, which is about 2 or 3 paragraphs, written in 3 lines, bullet points acceptable, to emphasize the key points that you want the recruiters know the most about you. http://www.resumepromo.com Thank you.

[Soeroto]

Please give information job

[guru]

I was reading through your blogs. You have given some Excellent tips.
I have a website for free online resume creation (www.detailedresume.com) . Would you like to post your article on my website? I will be happy to post your article as tips for my website users.