Recruiters are Busy
Recruiters get hundreds (if not thousands) of items crossing their desks every week. They don’t have time to read everything in detail but instead skim items and make quick decisions whether to keep reading or throw it away.
Recruiters are looking for a reason to throw away your resume. Avoid mistakes that would give them a reason to throw your documents away.
Make it Easy on Them
You must make all resumes and cover letters easy to read, especially for those over 50.
- Use readable, high contrast and larger fonts (no smaller than 10 point).
- You can shrink the margins to squeeze in more words, but tiny margins are not as pleasing to eye for anyone. If they’re looking for an excuse to skip reading your item, lots of text with no margin is a petty, but adequate reason to skip it.
- Never use hard to read fonts, like script or handwriting fonts, even if it looks interesting or fun.
- Clearly separate your documents into sections to allow quick skimming. For Resumes, use clearly separated sections for Education, Experience and other skills. For letters, be sure to clearly separate your paragraphs.
How Recruiters get Judged
The HR person is the first person to read your materials and they often don’t understand most of the professional speak, tools, techniques or projects. They scan documents for keywords that they are looking for and making sure they are there.
The HR representative reading your resume gets judged on the following criteria:
- How many quality candidates they bring in
- How many of those candidates get hired
- How many of those new hires are big contributors to the company
- How well new hires match the work ethic and work quality of the company
- How many of those new hires stay with company for a significant amount of time
Think about what you say and what your writings help meet these criteria.