Re: Tooting my own horn...Resume Information
[snip]Unfortunately, there's just not the time to read each resume through.
I hear this all the time, and my reaction is that I just can'tMike:
believe the fear and loathing so many people have when it comes
to the act of reading.
Have you ever hired? When you have hundreds of resumes, you need some sort of criteria to reduce the load. Often, you simply don't have time to read every resume carefully. If you consider what's on the first page (objective, skills, and accomplishments), then scanning the first page isn't as arbitrary as you may think. From this information - or from the lack of it - a reasonably accurate impression can be obtained. Admittedly, you may miss a few good candidates, but not too many.
When I was teaching university, I found much the same thing with student essays. If I read only the first and last paragraphs, I could usually predict with some accuracy what mark the entire paper would get, whether I was doing the marker or another instructor was. Why? Because these are areas where organization is crucial. If writers can't organize their thoughts for these crucial paragraphs, then the rest of the essays would rarely be better. Similarly, if they had nothing to say, these paragraphs made the fact obvious.
Needless to say, I never based a mark on only these two paragraphs. But, if I had, the marks wouldn't have varied much in most cases, so doing so would have saved time, if I hadn't been conscientious.
Not necessarily. Resumes differ enormously in organization and presentation. Also, "what you are looking for" may be presented under different names. For example, if you're looking for XML experience, it might be included under "markup languages" or perhaps "DocBook." Moreover, if you have several requirements, you can really only scan accurately for a few terms at a time. The chances are, you'd have to scan each resume several times.
When you have a pile of resumes which are all laid out more or
less the same way, and you already know what you are looking
for, you should be able to scan through every paragraph at a
phenomenal rate of speed.
I don't deny that these realities are frustrating to job seekers. But they make sense from the point of view of HR. They are also a good reason not to rely on want ads in your job search. If you're dealing one on one, then your contacts are far more likely to read your resume thoroughly and therefore see the wonderfulness that is each of us.
--
Bruce Byfield bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604.421.7177
http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield
"Some say the Devil's just an angel in the dark,
Some say the Devil's just a good man feeling bad,
Some say the Devil's just the lads out for a lark,
Some say the Devil plays the only music glad and good."
-Jez Lowe, "Tear-Drop Two-Step"
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