By Felicia Marsh, January 28, 2022
What happens when you send your résumé to an employer?
Most often it is dumped into a huge database for matching and filtering.
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| Photo by Thomas Jensen on Unsplash |
I have helped dozens of friends and colleagues writing résumés and the most common complaint I heard from them is "I have sent out hundreds of résumés and haven't heard back from anyone." How is that even possible? For the most part, these are educated and experienced individuals, so the numbers don't really add up.
It made me wonder, how much do computer software algorithms play a role in disposing of an applicant résumé before it ever crosses human eyes for consideration.
Is it a simple matter of filtering being so stringent that you need an exact set of keywords embedded in your résumé to get pass the electronic gatekeeper? That seems to be what the recruiters are selling.
So I started to dig a little.
Filters Are Potentially Excluding Millions
Well, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, The Millions of Resumes Employers May Never See (Dill, Sept 4, 2021) that is likely the case. Along with a number of other surprising "negative" criteria that immediately eliminate qualified or capable candidates.
According to Kathryn Dill, different ways of describing skill sets can unintentionally exclude ideal candidates.
For example, experience managing employees can be described as managing, supervising, overseeing, team building, directing, etc. If an applicant's resume describes their experience as supervisory and the job description requires managerial experience, it is possible that the resume may be discarded if it doesn't have a high enough percentage of keyword hits.
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| Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash |
And I get it. Businesses get hundreds or thousands of applicants that have to be filtered or they would never get through them. I have friends who have papered the internet with multiple versions of their résumé using apps like ResumeRabbit or other auto posting software in hopes of getting a few hits.
But when I hear hiring managers say things like "I just can't find good people," I have to wonder how they are overlooking so many people who are out there searching. How does someone with a 2 degrees or an MIS degree and 10 or more years of experience have trouble even getting an interview?
Not Matching Up
Employers that search against long and/or complicated job descriptions instead of narrowing their requirements down to key capabilities to perform the job will often miss out on very capable candidates that may be searching across industries. This is very apparent for military personnel who are crossing into the civilian workforce and have to translate their job title and skill set into marketable terms in a much broader and less universal pool of job descriptions.
How to Navigate the Filters
Tailoring. As much as job seekers don't want to hear it, there is no way around having multiple versions of your resume. The best way to get through the filters is to tailor your resume to each job description that you are applying for.
10% Return Vs. None
Focus on 10 to 20 of the openings at the top of your list and customizing the descriptions of your experience and skills on your resume to include the same wording as the posted job description. While this seems to be a massive effort when you are submitting hundreds of resumes, it truly is a manageable task when you narrow down the number of applications you submit to a much smaller group. After all, even if it takes twice as long, it is better to get a response back from 2 out of 20 submissions, than no responses out of 100.
Best wishes in your searches!
References:
The Millions of Resumes Employers May Never See by Kathryn Dill, printed in The Wall Street Journal, Sept 4, 2021, pages B1, B6. Online version titled Companies Need More Workers. Why Do They Reject Millions of Résumés? posted Sept. 4, 2021 12:00 am ET.
