Don’t Forget the Small Things [that make a recruiters job easier!]

What I am about to discuss may seem like a small thing, or perhaps even like I am nit picking. However,  as a Recruiter with over twenty years of experience in corporate and executive search recruitment, I have looked at a ton of resumes.

Just today, I was reviewing a stack of resumes that I pulled from my printer and the phone rang.  By the time I got back to the stack I had somehow managed to get the copies out of order and found myself very annoyed because 80% of the professional resumes I viewed did not have the candidates name and contact information and page number on each page.  Why is that important , you may ask? Well it took me a long time to match type styles fonts and places worked among other things, so that I could match up the appropriate pages of the resumes. 

The lesson here is:  Resumes should always have the contact information on each page – in case this information gets lost, mismatched or whatever.  It made me wonder how many recruiters just get so frustrated trying to match that they either throw the copies away or judge the candidate as lazy, unprofessional or not very smart.

I actually took the time to match the resumes but it did take an unwelcomed amount of time and I know that busy recruiters (like myself) do not have a lot of time to spare.  They say the average recruiter spends about 10 seconds reviewing a resume.  Honestly, I think this is accurate. If you are good at what you do in the recruitment world you can decide if a candidate has the minimum qualifications in a very short time. 

Job applicants take heed:  It is a very competitive job market.  Make it as easy on the resume reviewer as possible. Add these very small but important items to your resume.

Deb

Written by Deb Sutton, MS SPHR

CEO/Founder, HR Pros, LLC

www.hrprosllc.net