The 2017 - 6 second Resume or CV analysis

It is said that the average recruiter now takes as little as 6 seconds to analyse your resume

How “I” read a resume

Current role: I'm trying to work out what this person's current role is, and why they are interested in a new role. Are they redundant? End of project? Got the boot? Have they only been in their role for a few months? Is their most recent experience relevant to the position for which I'm recruiting for? If there is a strong profile on the resume this can often give me the information I need.

Company recognition: I am not going to lie. I’m a company snob. It's not that I think certain companies are better than others (but obviously some are). It's how quickly I can gain a perspective. This is often more difficult to do when a candidate has only worked for more unusual or not so popular companies, I've never heard of. So therefore a little one liner about the project or company can fill in that gap for me. If I don’t have this, it just means I have to read the resume a little deeper, which usually isn't a problem, unless it's poorly set-out, has typos, mistakes, wrong order etc.

Overall experience: Is there job progression? Do they have increasing levels of responsibility? Do the titles make sense? Do the duties match what I'm looking for?

Keywords: If I am recruiting for a final trim grader operator then guess what, I am looking for those words, quickly. I want to see that your resume has those skills and quickly, that’s where the profile helps again. Some recruiters will use Control + F to search through documents quickly.  ATS systems do this for some recruiters only spewing out the resumes that meet the criteria (more about this and its very important in future articles)

Career Gaps: Gaps are OK , so long as there's a sufficient explanation. End of Project etc. European Holiday, Spent time looking after kids.

LinkedIn / Facebook/ Twitter links: I always click on these just because I am nosey. Not so much to find out about you but mostly to see who you are following and who’s connected with you etc.

General issues: Location, eligibility to work in Australia. PR, Citizen, relevant visa etc

Presentation: Includes spelling, grammar, ease of use and ability to see things in the right order does it make sense

"Total time it takes me to do all of the above: Less than 30 seconds" I read that I should be doing this in 6 seconds now. That is apparently the time a recruiter takes to appraise your resume.

"I will probably read on more in depth later, but only if I already know I like the candidate. It probably takes me less than a minute to fully take in a resume and put them in the maybe file"

Things I don’t really care about or consider

Education: In general its experience that’s relevant. However there are exceptions to the rule. Engineers will need an appropriate degree however a quick glance is all it needs. I am usually not interested in where you schooled or what OP or VEC you got. Focus on the work experience

Creative formatting: What I am saying I don’t care if it’s creatively designed as long as it is appropriate. If it is both though, it is naturally nicer on the eye and therefore may gain my attention for longer.  Most companies now use Applicant Tracking Systems that analyse your resume for information and convert it to text. Recruiters don't often see how great your resume looks. I always recommend having an ATS resume so it goes through the system looking great. 

Personal details: I have learnt to ignore marital status, family status (whether or not a person has children), reference to health or medical issues photos. Including things like this is common in resumes in other countries, but it really makes me cringe when people include photos with their resumes. I have kept a collection of these. The selfie has taken over with some strange angles. To protect the guilty I won’t show them here. If I want to see what you look like, I'll check you out on LinkedIn. Not anonymously either.

Cover letters: I hate them and never read them. Most recruiters will agree although there are some that will, but few, and again the ATS has removed this. If there is more to say why isn’t it in the resume already.  

Things I wish people would stop doing

• Writing resumes in first person: just don’t do it – weird.
• Using MS Word's resume templates – you know the ones I mean, go to templates in MS Word to see what I mean. Curriculum Vitae in large letters on its side along the length of the resume - its also weird
• Allowing the resume to be a silly amount of pages. 8+  Personally I don’t care if you worked at KFC.  Good for you but not for me
• ‘objective’ Please don’t put that at the top of your resume. It’s a bit dated and meant for Wall Street not a mining project.

What next? – Well check through your resume to ensure that you are selling yourself well or send your resume for a free confidential no obligation assessment [email protected]  

Following my last article I gave free advice to a number of people. 

Peter J said  "....and I thought my resume was OK. I now see why it isn't and why I haven't had any success with it in 5 months"

Orange Collar is a Mining, Civils, Energy and Resources Hub covering the whole of Australia. Our team of specialised professionals offer no-nonsense recruitment, professionally written resumes, unique DIY Resume packages and results focused HR Consultancy. Register at www.orangecollar.com.au