In my side business, we've been looking for a programmer for awhile but because we have to dedicate more of our time and energy towards the business side of things, sometimes recruitment takes a back seat even though it is important as well.
As a result, two and a half months after looking for someone, we still haven't filled the vacancy yet. Recently, we decided to post on Jobstreet and JobsDB in order to have a greater pool of applicants to choose from and this is the first time I've accessed these sites as an employer seeking people rather than as an employee seeking jobs.
We're receiving a high number of applicants day by day and it is definitely a place to find a large pool of job seekers. However, the first thing I noticed was that the majority of the resumes are, to be honest, pretty horrendously written.
It makes me wonder if colleges and universities even give any tips or guidelines nowadays on how to create a presentable resume.
It also makes me wonder if college and university graduates have sufficient intelligence and common sense to know what is presentable first of all, and more importantly, if these graduates even know that it might just be important for them to sell themselves to potential employers.
In fact, I've had conversations with people recently who appear rather intelligent and who can do good work, who can't secure a lot of interviews because they are reluctant to create a decent resume. Stubbornly reluctant.
I'm not saying that I'm an authority on this matter. In fact, because I've been in the same department for over six years, I haven't really had the need to update my resume and have been trying to get off my butt to do it. But at the very least, there are some things which are glaringly unacceptable to me.
Firstly, please create an e-mail address which is sufficiently professional to send out your applications under. E-mails like foxylovergirl@, bighotdaddy@, drunkenbiatch@ is just not going to cut it when you're trying to land your preferred job. You can complain all you like that the person can be an excellent worker despite a funny e-mail address, but the employer is probably going to put that resume in the bin before you even get a chance to put your foot in the door for the interview.
Secondly, try to insert a professional picture. If there is no picture, it's not a fatal error by a long shot but it might subtly imply that you're embarassed to put your picture in. Far worse than not having a picture is to put a bad picture and to be honest, the majority I've seen so far are just that. The picture is grainy, poor quality and the person looks like they got out the wrong side of the bed. At the very least, dress up like you're going to work in a corporate environment. No old T-shirts, Polo shirts which used to be white and are now cream coloured, plunging necklines...
Thirdly, proofread the resume or get someone who can write passable English to check and refine the language. There are few things more frustrating when trying to employ for a position which requires quality and attention to detail, than to see typos throughout the resume. If it were just grammatical errors, I would understand a bit considering that the first language may not be English but numerous typos and spelling errors where even Microsoft Word underline in red are missed out many times. That's just something I don't get.
Finally, customise the resume if you can. It's quite amusing to see a resume with an objective statement "To secure a marketing position in an established company" and then have that same resume sent out to apply for IT and Publishing positions. It happens. Sometimes not so directly - but it will be very apparent to the employer if the resume has a lot irrelevant content throughout that someone just did a lazy, general resume without thought on what to put in, and then mass sent it out to the entire world.
These are some of what I feel are important to note. Of course, there are a lot more areas such as resume length, making the language more powerful and confident, meeting the needs of the employer, structuring the flow, and so on, but they won't be covered here. What I've shared is just my thoughts on some of the bare basics to get right.
And guess what? From looking through the Jobstreet and JobsDB applicants, around 98% are rejected straight off the bat because it is not an exaggeration to say that most of the applications out there are pure crap. Therefore, it should not be difficult to have yours stand out and make an impact on the employer; it just takes a little bit of effort.
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