Is your resume getting sunk by any “knockout factors”?
You know the kinds of articles I love reading? Ones where you get a peek inside the brain of a gatekeeper, see what makes them tick, so you can figure out how to work your way past them.
Richard H. Beatty has delivered one of these articles for CareerJournal.com, entitled “These Resume Gaffes Do Immediate Damage,” and he really delivers the goods.
In Beatty’s article, the gatekeeper is a recruiter, staffing professional, or other person screening resumes for employment opportunities. These pros have multiple positions to fill, and they’ve got to scan through hundreds of resumes to find the right people for the right jobs.
Beatty refers to a set of eight “knockout factors” – little things that allow a recruiter to quickly dismiss a resume from further scrutiny. Here’s a peek at the process:
During the initial screening, the employment professional is alert for factors that will immediately eliminate a candidate from further consideration. These knockout factors invariably mean sure death to a person’s candidacy. They typically include:
- An objective that doesn’t match current openings.
- Inappropriate or insufficient educational credentials.
- Incompatible salary requirements.
- Poorly organized, sloppy or hard-to-read content.
- Geographic restrictions incompatible with current openings.
- A long list of employers in a short period of time.
- Too much information.
- A lack of U.S. citizen or permanent-resident status.
You know what this means, right? Time to check your resume for any of these issues. Now, some of them may not, in fact, be issues for you. For example, maybe you don’t want to relocate in the first place. Then who cares if the Terra Haute recruiter knocks you off her list?
But if your resume is “poorly organized, sloppy or hard-to-read,” then you might want to have a pro resume writer give it a tune-up.
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[...] on the blog before how companies, on the receiving end of hundreds of resumes for a position, look first for mistakes that allow them to discard as many resumes as [...]
Resumes with any kind of a gaffe most likely will be rejected. I have been a recruiter at a staffing agency for over 20 years and this fact is as true today as it was back then. Take the time to double check a resume before sending it out.