How To Get Your Resume Noticed For the Right Reasons

Have you ever submitted your resume for a position and never received a response? No "Thank you for your resume.... ".   No "We appreciate your interest in this position but there are better qualified candidates... ".  Sometimes it just seems like your resume was just sucked into a black hole. Well hopefully we can shed some light on the whole hiring process and give you a few tips to avoid the resume black hole.  Below we will enlighten you on HOW THE HIRING PROCESS WORKS, the importance of understanding HOW APPLICANT TRACKING SYSTEMS WORK and how you can work them, THE IMPORTANCE OF KEY WORDS AND WHICH ONES TO USE,  as well as WHAT HIRING TEAMS LOOK FOR AND LOOK AT IN A RESUME, and WHEN TO USE A COVER LETTER


HOW THE WHOLE HIRING PROCESS WORKS
The hiring process has changed significantly since the advent of the internet, and job boards.  There are a number of rules, policies and even Dept of Labor hiring regulations that have changed the process over the years.  Gone are the days of passing your resume to your friend and getting hired on their recommendation alone. The first piece of information that is probably most important to know that for every single position, any company wants to hire for, they must advertise that job publicly. This is to ensure that Equal Opportunity Employment (EOE) regulations are met. Essentially to make sure that the CFO's nephew who failed out of high school and is causing trouble at home doesn't get hired to be the VP of sales over a multitude of candidates who are fully qualified for the role and have a successful track record of being exceptional VPs of Sales. Publicly advertising a job can constitute posting that job on a company's website, any public job board, OR through a search firm or recruiting firm. Many times companies will perform confidential replacement searches, yet they have to publicly advertise. They use search firms for this.

Another thing you need to know is that regardless of how your resume comes into a company, it has to go through an HR System or Applicant Tracking System.  This is where your resume is ranked against all other applicants based on how well your experience with the requirements is detailed in your resume, and where a company decides which candidates they will interview and which they will pass on.  We'll get into this a little bit more below


HR SYSTEMS (Otherwise known as Applicant Tracking Systems or ATS) AND HOW THEY WORK IN THE PROCESS
The first thing you need to know about HR Systems or ATS is that regardless of how any resume comes into a company (through a job board, the CEO, HR, fax, email, snail mail, etc) they must be entered into an Applicant Tracking System or ATS (and we'll go into more detail about this below). The US Dept of Labor requires this of ALL hiring companies in the United States, so they can properly track candidates through the hiring process. While an ATS can be helpful to the hiring team, it can be the beginning of a maze for the candidate. One of the things that the ATS is supposed to track the qualifications of any candidate going through the process. The US Dept of Labor requires hiring companies to track all candidate activity, from the start of the process to the end for each open position, and the hiring company must show that only fully qualified candidates are hired for the roles they have open. The Dept of Labor regularly audits companies to ensure they are in compliance with this process. What does this mean for the candidate?  A LOT.  First, your resume is ranked by Key Words to see if it shows you meet all of the requirements.  REQUIREMENTS, after all are actually REQUIRED!  Right?! (Key words are addressed in more detail below), Your education, years of experience, duration of employment at each company, and skills all may be assessed through an ATS. Hiring Managers are required to record all of their review and interview notes into an ATS  (or report them back to HR who puts them into the ATS) and those notes all have to match up and support that the candidate meets the requirements. Essentially the ATS is the main Sentry or Gate Keeper a candidate needs to make their way past to get into any company.


THE IMPORTANCE OF KEY WORDS AND WHICH ONES TO US

WHEN A HIRING TEAM REVIEWS A RESUME WHAT DO THEY LOOK FOR AND WHAT DO THEY LOOK AT?


TO COVER LETTER OR NOT TO COVER LETTER