A view from the other side of the resume
Yesterday, I had to review 72 resume that had been submitted for one Administrative Assistant's position in our office. I do look at each one but quite honestly, most ended up in the discard pile because of a few issues. These reasons might seem petty but I just don't have the time to call everyone in for an interview so I am looking for a resume that pops.
1. Poor spelling or grammar. If you do not proof read your cover letter and/or resume then how well will you do when I ask you to produce a document or letter for me? Please write in business form, not personal so I know that you can format a business letter.
2. No dates on your resume. I don't know when this became acceptable but if you don't have dates on your Employment History I think you are hiding something.
3. Too many jobs in too short a time. I actually look at how long you stayed at each job. I don't discount you if you have only been on your job for six months or so because at one time or another everyone has had a job that just didn't work out. I look for patterns. If you have never held a job for longer than a year I'm probably not going to call you.
3. Not reading the salary range. If you are applying for a position that is advertised at $12.00 or $13.00 an hour then why are you saying that your salary requirements are $50,000 a year? (no kidding I had this in the resumes I just went through).
4. Not changing your objective. I am advertising for an Administrative Assistant and there were objectives stating they were looking for a position in Human Resources, Marketing, Sales, etc. It makes me think that as soon as you find a job in Human Resources, Marketing or Sales you will leave my company.
5. Please do not include personal information in your cover letter. For example, one letter went into great detail as to what the medical problem was that kept the applicant out of work for over a year. This is more than likely going to make me wonder whether you will miss a lot of work due to your medical condition. Once you are in the interview process, you can discuss this, if necessary.
Anyway, that's my two cents from the other side of the resume.
As a hiring manager, I want to find an employee that I think will be with my company for a long time. To be quite honest, I don't have time to bring you in and ask you why you have so many jobs in such a short time if I have other resumes on my desk where they have been at their companies for a few years. They are going to be my priority (if they have to right background, of course). It's all about that thirty seconds scan your resume will get when I look at it. That's about all you've got to catch my attention. Whether or not the work is part time or full time, it's all about whether I think you will jump ship after a few months.
Best wishes,
Kim Isaacs
The Resume Expert
About a year ago, I hired a new assistant. This job was an internal posting only and is for an obscure technical specialty so I wasn't expecting everyone who applied to have a lot of experience (or even any experience). Although HR screened the applicants, I personally looked at every resume because this is not something they hire for every day and I wanted to be sure they didn't miss some gem. Here's what drove me crazy with my 26 applicants:
-Although we specifically said in the posting that we would consider 6 different work locations (in 4 different states) I had at least 8 people apply who not only were not in any of those locations, they weren't willing to relocate to any of those sites (even if we'd been willing to pay relocation, which we weren't).
-I had at least 2 people who were 2 grades higher than the advertised job and wanted me to jump through hoops to get it raised. If you had a clue what we had to do to get it where it was, you wouldn't have even asked.
-Although I specifically said in the posting there could be a lot of travel involved, I had 3 people who didn't really want to be away from home.
-And now we come to the spelling and grammar issues and resumes where every line was something like "I worked in this department for a year and did cashiering".
-And let us not forget that these are internal postings in a big company, so I have the score (on a scale of 1-5) of your last 3 job performance reviews. I can see that you only got a 2 and are desperate to get out of this other department and I can read where you say on your resume that you're a stellar performer and we should be handing you a gold star.
-Finally, and most importantly, almost no one gave me a reason to interview them. At least half did not include a cover letter (although the system would allow it), most did not take 5 minutes to tweak their resume to fit the posting. They did not tell me something like:
"I had no idea this obscure field existed but when I saw the posting I realized how well that would fit my skills and abilities from these other disciplines..." and then go on to tell me why. One guy didn't tweak his resume, or include a cover letter, but did hunt me down and send me an email a few days later to tell me all the stuff that applied and why I should look at him. That was better than nothing but for Pete's sake, why didn't he do that in the right forum? I get 150 emails a day, he's incredibly lucky I even saw it and read it and matched it up with the application!
And you'll love this one! One person that applied had a very vaguely related reason to call me about something a few days later. I'd never talked to her in the year she'd been in her current position and I'd been in mine, but she manufactured a reason to call me up, I'm sure under the guise of establishing a little rapport and improving her chances. That would have been fine, if she hadn't called me on my cell phone at 6am. Yes, we're in different time zones and since she had to go to our online directory and look me up to get the number, it should have been really obvious that Oregon and South Dakota are not in the same time zone. Especially since our HQ is on the West Coast, this shouldn't be such a tough concept. She was smart enough to pull her application a few days later.
Tess
Sigh. I made the mistake of giving my cell phone number to a few of our applicants since I am very difficult to reach on my office line. I got a call this evening (during dinner with my family) from one that I interviewed this afternoon letting me know that, shocking as it may seem, she was given another job offer this evening and BTW, how did her interview go?
Thank you very much for your reply. Your thoughts on cover letters were much appreciated as I do spend some time and effort on them.
Cheers!
Wow!! What you and krc316 posted are almost laughable. Oh sure the process of job searching can be a bit tricky and I sheepishly admit that I need work on "tweaking" my resume/cover letters .
However, pretty much everything you both listed is COMMON SENSE!!!! I always make sure my spelling and grammar are spotless and I read a job posting to make sure I can meet the requirements. For example, I refused to apply on most social work jobs until I knew that I was my application to be an LSW was completely approved.
I will concede, however, that these are great reminders even for the most conscientious (sp?) job seeker because sometimes people can get a bit complacent....not a bad thing, it just happens.
Thank ladies!!