Resume gusto

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by Hille, May 11, 2002.

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  1. Hille

    Hille Active Member

    Hello, I was questioning a school recruiter today on a resumes initial appeal. I specifically wondered on the use of an extreme color of paper. This worked for my daughter in the past. He suggested the use of higher gloss finish. Any ideas from people currently reviewing resumes appreciated. Have a peaceful weekend. This is just about the paper. ********Hille
     
  2. Guest

    Guest Guest

    I have noticed resumes done on quality paper that is off white or that yellowish/beige color that invitations are printed on. I would be put off by extreme colors.

    Nonetheless, factors which I have looked for have more to do with content & quality of writing.

    North
     
  3. Mike Albrecht

    Mike Albrecht New Member

    In technical fields, more locations are requesting it by e-mail or fax, and if it comes by snail mail, to make sure it is scannable as much of the pre-screening will be done electronically. This means that font size and type is more important than paper, with layout, spelling and grammer being also very important.
     
  4. Yes, very true. The company for which I work uses a 3rd party that processes the resumes using their work-at-home employees. So we don't ever see any of the tens of thousands of resumes coming in. We can search the keywords in the "profile" set up by the scanning/processing company, and if someone looks good we can then look at the scanned resume. So it's critical for candidates to make sure that relevant information can be identified by non-specialists who build the profile, and to make sure that the resume can be easily OCR'ed. (An even better approach is for people to build their own profile and submit resume as a PDF through the company website.)
     
  5. Ian Anderson

    Ian Anderson Active Member

    The company I used to work for and hire engineers used a screening program that compared key words in the resume with key words in the job description. And the scoring was based on the quantity of key words. So I now type what I think are key words sequebtially in one or two lines, then shrink the font size as small as I can, so these words apear as a line at the bottom of the resume. This will give a higher score with some scoring systems.
     
  6. The last two hiring committees I served on wound up with the pile o' resumes selected for interviews being all on plain white paper -- we discarded quite a few that were on very nice paper. Some on heavy textured paper that was quite impressive -- and hard to read.

    The most important thing in a resume is that it be readable -- legible, at least, and beyond that well and concisely written.
     
  7. Mike Albrecht

    Mike Albrecht New Member

    Another trend is to actually have a keywor section either at the begining or end that has keywords that you wish to stress (or is that stress over?).
     
  8. Jack Tracey

    Jack Tracey New Member

    Good advice above. At this point I have six versions of my resume. Some stress one aspect of my experience over others and one was developed last year as the HR department where I'm currently employed said they wanted a one-page version. I have one version that has a slightly unusual font but most are very standard Times New Roman or something quite like it. All get printed on good quality white (not off-white) paper. I've never worried about keywords but I supposed that will be coming to the human services profession soon enough. The only people I've known who spend a lot of time designing their resumes (colored paper, exotic fonts, illustrations, etc) are people who are in the graphic arts profession.
    Jack
     
  9. Chip

    Chip Administrator

    I was talking a year or so ago to a friend who does resume writing for a living, and is also member of some association of resume professionals.

    The association generally recommends two completely different resumes; one that is "human-friendly" and one that is machine friendly.

    The "human friendly" ones that he does are nlcely laid out with graphic elements, type variation, and other things to make it different, eye-catching, yet accessible (the info the HR person or hiring manager needs is quite easily located on the page.)

    The "machine friendly" one is totally not graphically pleasing... all type is the same size standard Times or Courier, no bold or italic, lots and lots of keywords and key phrases, contact info blocked off at the top.

    All this, basically, to make the "machine" one friendly to the Resumix software that many large companies (and smaller companies who contract with somebody) use to sort through resumes.

    Hope that helps.
     

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