Resume writers are behind the times
The tortoise and the hare is a great story for some situations, but not for getting work now.
By Jacquie Liversidge
It’s an increasingly technologically driven world. Most position descriptions for jobs will specify that the applicant apply online, a great deal of jobs are only advertised online, so to this end, resume writers need to be keeping the pace with the technology that employers will be using to view the resume.
I myself am personally invested in keeping my approach to resumes, selection criteria and cover letters up to date. I believe resume writers have a responsibility to maintain relevance for the sake of their clients, to drive innovation in the small way that we can, and to maintain a good reputation. The stylistic approaches differ per client, per industry and per position, within a general frame of across the board of largely unwritten, unofficial guidelines, however we need to constantly update ourselves and have the end-purpose of the resume at the forefront of our approach–before anything else.
A new addition to the job application process which we need to be careful of in our approach, (and one which is being overlooked by some resume writers) is the Applicant Tracking System. I’ve written about it here, but to give you a quick insight, it is a software application that assesses your application against the position description for suitability.
Applicant Tracking Systems aren’t widely used yet, but they are still in place in larger organisations, and the employer has no obligation to tell you that your application will be assessed by one.
Purposeful. Design.
It’s important.
In my research on other resume writers worldwide, I found a trend apparent in executive resumes of graphs and charts (infographics) outlining varying successes and achievements. Not only is this not necessary and disruptive to the resume, the applicant tracking systems certainly can’t read the image within the resume and may disrupt the assessment.
Following on from this, the next issue that is apparent with the use of images and infographics, is that you are never sure what program the resume will be opened on, and how the formatting of the resume will appear ultimately. If images are present, there is a possibility that they will end up skewed.
One last issue with the use of images and infographics is printing. Resumes and application material get printed a great deal of the time within the office, and there is generally a copy of the resume printed for the interview. The office isn’t going to be wasting their expensive coloured ink on your resume, it will certainly be printed in black and white.
I myself can’t think of a single time that a resume has been printed in colour in all my experience.
So although the resume may look fine on the screen, be sure to print it, and assess how any present colour and images appear in hard copy.
For this reason, though professional resume writers can offer services that are going to really make your resume shine, the industry needs to be keeping pace with the technology that will be processing or displaying the document. Employing a systemic approach that is not adaptable to technological change is only going to mean that we let our clients down in ways that our clients might not even realize.
I hope you’ve been able to take something away from today’s article, and always be careful with your choice of writer!
