Before You Apply For My Jobs

Please keep in mind that I am extremely busy and usually fielding dozens and sometimes hundreds of resumes most days. This is likely your first, last, and only chance to be granted an interview with our company. When I open your resume, it better tell me clearly, without having to read even a sentence or paragraph, what you do for a living. I do not have time or an interest in sorting through piles of information upfront to find out if you even work in the general category for the job I have open. It better be big, bold, and blatantly clear if you want me to look further. If I do not see what I am looking for, you are gone. Delete. It happens that quickly.

I like intelligent people and so does my company, and I am not talking about your education level is. The world is full of educated idiots. If I open your resume and it is visually a hodgepodge of illogical and disorienting sections of information with odd amateurish formatting and fonts that gives me a headache, you are going to turn me off before I even get going. If I am not reading something quickly that shows me that you know how to put together a well structured section with your overall qualifications, written to impress, I am giving you a 10% chance that someday I will bump into you in our cafeteria. I do not really care what you do for living. I want to know my company is hiring intelligence, no matter what level you are or job function you hold. There are no excuses for not being sharp and professional regardless of what you do for a living.

Oh, you are still here. Congratulations, you fall into the 15% of resumes that make it this far. You have a ways ago and the odds are against you, so do not get an inflated sense of self. That tends to happen when people finally take a minute to talk about themselves on paper and think about their goals. Never mind. You have just been deleted. I am not looking further at that work history you laid out with a lack of quality content and information. Obviously, you did not think through how to better package these items to sell yourself intelligently. You do not know what myself and others look for in candidates? Too bad. It is not anyone's job to educate you. You clearly do not understand what to include and what not to include for your work history in order to impress and influence me to pick you. Overall, it appears you do not know much at all about putting together a professional resume document at all. You think you do, but you don't.

So I guess you have not internalized that hiring is subjective and that there are many things to know? In between wasting time on FB and flipping around the tube while you put together this important livelihood generating document, I guess you did not do too much thinking about some of these key items. Let me guess. You spent thousands of dollars on an education or some certificate program, but not a nickel on how to market yourself. Brilliant. I guess they still do not teach useful things in school. By the way, Who do you think makes a team? It is not always the most talented players. You can compete with less, but you better sell yourself really well. You are going up against many and the job market is a competition, and guess who holds the key to your future? Me, the company recruiter. Well that's not fair? Too bad. Life is not fair, get used to it.