The Myth Of The One Page Resume

I am on a mission to help the professional population learn that recruiters EVERYWHERE wish the myth of the one-page resume would die a very public, fiery, TOTAL AND COMPLETE death.

Many, many years ago when I was quite young, my Mom was a Nurse Recruiter for a major hospital. I remember her coming home occasionally directly from a job fair with a pile of resumes. When I graduated from college and started my own career, I remember the career center telling me to make sure my resume was one page. Why?

• You made a copy of your resume, then you went to a copy shop and paid to have dozens of copies of it printed.
• Resumes were either MAILED via the USPS and it cost more money to send out anything over an ounce
• Or they were FAXED and each page cost money to send
• They were also taken to JOB FAIRS and put in trays/stacks/boxes
• Recruiters kept them in physical hanging files, because legally they needed to retain them at least a year.

Way back then, employers hired more on potential, or GPA, and a resume was more of a formality than anything, because it was your communication style, your REFERENCES, your reputation, and the people who recommended you that really really influenced the hiring decision. (Hint: it’s still called networking.)

Fast forward to when I first started recruiting. Most resumes were sent via email as attachments, or yes, still from job fairs. They were downloaded into a server file or scanned from the fax machine and then saved to that same file manually by a recruiter, or coordinator, or administrative assistant. There was no ability to actually run a keyword search, so server file systems were vast.

Then the magical MONSTER.COM came along. And this new sort of database called an “Applicant Tracking System” that was built on search technology; it started with a technology called “OCR” (optical character recognition), which was a way characters were scanned by the ATS. That was the birth of today’s modern recruiting basic system.

But wait, there’s more! Between 2005 and 2007 the EEOC started putting some very stringent rules around how employers needed to prove they were fairly considering applicants based on their actual skills and experience, instead of just what school they went to and who they knew. These requirements affected mostly larger employers; but recruiters generally carry their training with them when they switch jobs, so recruiting as a profession adapted by making this a “best practice” regardless of the size of the company.

This is also when the tech industry started exploding and there was a huge increase in the number of visa candidates that those tech companies were hiring. One of the requirements USCIS (Immigration) stipulated is: if an employer was going to start to hire immigration candidates, then *all* hires MUST meet the minimum requirements for the same job.

And then came…cloud computing, big data, analytics, and the rise of data-driven business decision making.

So here is where all the pieces come together. The very old-fashioned advice to “keep your resume to one page” has been outdated since at least 2005, but in reality closer to 2000. AWS (Amazon’s Web Services) is most often credited as the birth of “cloud computing”; it launched globally between 2002–2006, with Azure not far behind, and then Google joined the fun as well.

“Big Data” is all the information that is gleaned from tracking user behaviors and then analyzing it to show definite patterns. Since most business transactions are now scanned, analyzed, and broken down to see trends and use this information for forecasting and resource allocation, quantified information has become the bread and butter of the business world — including recruiting, hiring decisions, headcount planning (the annual process HR and Finance go through to determine staffing needs for their new year), promotions and, yes, RIF’s (layoffs).

So what does this mean to the average job seeker?

• Recruiters and hiring managers need to see a direct correlation between the job you are applying/being considered for and your experience. You need to meet the qualifications that are laid out in the job description.
• That means you need to include DETAILS and EXAMPLES of your work in your resume. (Keywords)
• Hiring managers need to know how you positively impact the business…with QUANTIFIABLE METRICS. (Accomplishments)
• Your skills need to be relevant and up to date.

Since the average professional changes jobs every 1.5–2 years, that means your resume needs to show each job in detail with accomplishments. Try doing that with six years of experience, any relevant education, and sticking to one page.

Exactly.

So here is where I tell you the basics of what most recruiters and hiring managers are looking for.

1. Your functional and transferable skills (tools like software programs, certifications, training, processes, industry domain knowledge) and the story of how you acquired those skills in your career. Training (seminars, conferences, classes) are useless and a waste of space if you are not using them currently; and if you DO use a skill regularly in your daily work, you don’t need to reference the class you originally took to get started.

2. Your recent work history including your employer*, your title, the dates you were employed with each employer, the how/what/why your position was critical for the success of the company. If you have spent the majority of your career at one or two companies, front-load your experience in the last 5–7 years or so; keep older information short. (*If your employer isn’t either a globally known entity or the business name is not self-explanatory — ie “Law Offices of J. Q. Public” then include a one line describing what they do — usually the either the company marketing tagline, or the first or second sentence from the “about us” section of the webpage.)

3. Your educational background — and this means your formal matriculated program (HS, college, university). This is not the same as your on-the-job training. If you have been out of school more than a year, your education goes to the bottom of the document (with a few exceptions like the legal or academic fields.)

A word about format: PLEASE don’t use graphics including logos, pie charts, bar graphs, and NO PHOTOS. The more columns and tables you use, the harder it is to read, and some ATS’ cannot parse information from resumes laid out other than standard sentences and paragpraphs.

If it has not become evident by now, it is almost impossible to use a functional format to relay the information needed. A list of projects/accomplishments and then another list of employers? No road map. On top of that, the way keyword matching works in any search: the number of times EACH keyword is repeated is how a document is STACK RANKED in order of closest match to the job qualifications.

So if you are in sales, and you are looking at a job with requirements of “Salesforce” and “cold calling”, then the senior account manager that only mentions each term twice will be deemed a lower match than the recent college grad that has both terms listed four or five times each.

SO: don’t worry about how long your resume is in terms of “pages”. Tell us what you have been doing the last 5–7 years. Two or three pages should be sufficient.

Hope this helps you understand what the people making the hiring decisions are looking for.

#resume #jobsearch #recruiter

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.