Resume Writing Questions Answered by a Recruiter

Resume writing is a daunting, painstaking, and often frustrating task for the majority of us. It's perfectly normal to dread having to update the thing, or worse, having to start from scratch! It's an ancient process from days past that, unfortunately, there is no good substitute for at the moment and if you want to advance your career, or even get that first job, you're going to have to play ball and make one. But where to start? What do you put in? What do you leave out? As you stare at that blank page on Microsoft Word these questions will slowly creep in and out of your consciousnesses and, if I'm correct, probably cause you a fair amount of anxiety. And let's be honest, that is something we all need a little bit less of these days. So here are some frequently asked questions I get as a recruiter regarding resume writing, that should hopefully answer some of your questions and at least give you a direction in which to start in.

Follow me on Twitter @RecruiterTHD

What's the best way to get my resume to fit on one page? And the award for most frequent mistake goes to... you guessed it, trying to fit decades of work experience onto a single page. I touched on this a little bit in my first article, but it's something that deserves a deeper examination. For years, we've all heard the anecdotal saying about how nobody reads past 2/3 of your resume. Like a bad urban legend, it persists, and is passed down from job seeker to job seeker. But let me ask you this: Have you ever heard a manager say this is what they do? Have you ever seen this "study" that claims to have uncovered this truth of truths? I'm going to wager you haven't. Now, there is a lot of good science on resume bias, but I'd be willing to bet there isn't a single hiring manager or recruiter out there who is going to read half your resume and decided they've seen all they need to see if, at that point, all the skills appear to be in the ballpark. I will say, that there is a chance that in 1985 it was possible that a large contingent of people were doing this, which is probably where this saying started, but we must consider the time. Every resume was printed and/or faxed and nothing existed digitally. Today, to get to the second page of your resume is just a spin of my mouse scroll wheel. Times. Have. Changed. Let me clear, if you are striping down your resume to its bare bones and sacrificing details to obtain the almighty single pager, you're doing resume writing wrong. Recruiters use keywords to find applicable resumes, and then comb through the results to find matches. If your resume says your a Java developer with 15 years of experience, but then the bullets under your time at IBM that look like this:

• Assisted in the creation of Java based applications
• Geared all development practices to adhere to the SAFe Agile framework
• The end

The recruiter is likely to move on. It's nothing personal, but people are counting on them to deliver the best candidates in a timely fashion and there just isn't time for recruiters to chase down everyone who could potentially, maybe, someday, hopefully, possibly, be a fit. Details, descriptions, and tangible facts help tell a story of you as a candidate. A good resume should not only detail everything you've done up until that point, but leave the reader knowing exactly what you are capable of if they hire you. If you have worked for more than 7 years, this will absolutely take longer than a page, and there is zero shame in that. However, let's not go crazy. If your career only spans 5 years, and you've dedicated a page to each of those years, it might be time to pare it back a little bit. Use your best judgment, and you won't go wrong.

Should I write a cover letter? Writing a cover letter is never going to hurt your chances of landing a job. In fact, I'm sure there are tons of anecdotal stories about a manager who saw something in a candidate's cover letter, and it was the only thing that convinced them to bring them in for an interview. I don't doubt that has happened hundreds, maybe thousands, of times. But you came here for the truth, and the truth is, by in large, they aren't getting read. By anyone. I admit, I will read them sometimes, but it's usually out of curiosity more than anything. At this point, I'm already interested in you as a candidate and now I want to see what makes you tick. They are optional for a reason. Where writing a cover letter can hurt you is probably somewhere you wouldn't expect. For a moment, let's pretend you are unemployed, on the job hunt, and spend 40 hours a week applying for jobs. Something I think we are all familiar with. If you spend 30 minutes crafting a cover letter, making sure everything is spelled correctly, your syntax is correct, you're not missing any words, etc., and you're applying to 25-50 jobs a week, that 12.5-25 hours a week just writing cover letters that most likely will never get read. That's time you could be applying to new roles, or networking, or attending job fairs. Your time is valuable! Use it wisely. Your resume, if written effectively, should tell the employer everything they need to know about you. Of course, I'm making the assumption that you are tailoring each cover letter to the job/company you're applying to in this scenario. If you feel compelled to say something about yourself that you couldn't get across in your resume, whip up a cover letter template, swap in and out key details with each submission, and let 'er rip.

Visit our careers page: careers.homedepot.com

Should I tailor my resume to fit the role I am applying for? First: See previous paragraph. Second: Why isn't this information you're coming up with now already in your resume? The idea is good. You're going to make yourself look like a perfect fit for the role based on the job description you are given. My argument is that those skills didn't just manifest themselves in your past roles after you read this new job description. They were always there! They should already be included in your resume! We can actually use this as an exercise to flesh out our resumes and make them detail rich. Think of your resume as a snowball. You see a job description, and you add things in it to match that description. Then you see another job description and you add more of your relevant skills to your resume to match that one, WITHOUT subtracting anything, gathering details as you roll along. After a while, every job description is tailored to you. Not the other way around. Once again, I feel compelled to put a disclaimer here: Use your best judgement. If your resume becomes 10 pages that's not a snowball, its an avalanche. Things like "excellent communication" and "proficient in Microsoft Office" can usually be left on the cutting room floor.

Should I address the unemployment gap on my resume? One thousand and fifty percent, YES! Recruiters, in particular agency recruiters, are taught to look for gaps in employment and to treat those as red flags. The thought process being: this person couldn't find work for a year? There must be something wrong. Unfortunately, the human mind will always run to the worst case scenario if it is allowed to. I know it sounds ridiculous, and it is, but there is something you can do about it. Fill in those gaps. I've had multiple candidates tell me they have had to take a sabbatical from the workforce for any number of totally legitimate reasons, but the only way I got these answers was by asking, and you can't assume someone is going to be like me and ask. If you stepped away from the work force to take care of your children, take care of your parents, to deal with health issues, or even to travel extensively, there is nothing wrong with that. Just make sure it's showcased, clear as day. If someone won't hire you because of a gap in work history that you have explained on your resume, they are the problem, not you. Quite frankly, if that were to happen, they don't deserve your talent and you should move on to somewhere that does. End of story.

In conclusion... My opinions on resume writing are just that, opinions. Your resume is a reflection of you as a person and as an employee, so no matter how you create it, it needs to work for you. It's a form of personal expression and should be treated as such. Remember, you will never get a second chance to make a first impression, and your resume, a lot of times, is your first impression. You should be proud to drop it into the inbox of your future manager, use your hand to pantomime a phone, and mouth the words "call me".