You may spend hours trying to write the perfect resume by finding the correct keywords from the job description, formatting the right font and talking to your professional references. All of this attempts to take your job search to the next level so you land that all-important interview.
Even if you take your vital document to a professional job recruiter for guidance, your perfect resume could still fail to deliver. The good news is that your failure is not the fault of your resume. Although your work of art may have all the right formatting, proofreading and eye for detail it can stand, the bad news is you may have to retool your job search to cater to five things that human resources managers use before looking through a stack of resumes.
1. Employee Referrals
Employees at a firm may refer viable candidates to HR as a way to speed up the job search process. If the supervisor and HR manager already have a candidate in mind, that makes hiring someone much easier if the potential hire wants the job. Once the person has the job, the best resumes in the world do not matter. Instead of making the ideal resume, build relationships at firms.
2. Existing Candidates from Previous Openings
Human resources already weeded out dozens — if not hundreds — of candidates from previous postings. The department's database still has these people in the computer system. The runner-up from the last time HR went through the hiring process could remain the front-runner for this round. If the person fits, no one else has to wade through resumes.
3. Internal Candidates
You sometimes hear about a job posting open to internal candidates first before a company searches for people outside the firm. An external job search may never post, or the company could remove the posting quickly, if an internal candidate makes the grade. Internal success obviates the need to open the posting up to everyone, except to fill the lower-level position vacated by the internal promotion.
4, Seeking Experts
Firms, agencies or institutions may have a specific person in mind and recruit that candidate solely on that person's publicly posted credentials. This method works for experts in a certain field that meet the criteria of the employer. Employers that work in specialized fields such as academia, research, engineering, fundraising and politics may already have someone in mind without turning to the general public for applications.
5. Cull the Competition
Companies may seek employees from rival companies that already have a similar position, relevant background and job experience. This shortens the job search considerably as human resources departments pore through Internet sources, social media and LinkedIn profiles to match ideal candidates with positions. The hardest part of this process becomes luring someone away from the other company with the right benefits package. The rival company already did the hard work of vetting the candidate in the first place, so all an HR department has to do is make the right moves.
A perfect-looking resume gets you one step closer to a job interview when all other candidates are equal. When a nontraditional job search finds the ideal candidate despite the polished resume, alter your strategy, make connections with companies and try again.
Photo courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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