Resume Bling - Don't Blind The Reader!

​A Resume is YOU, up in lights!  A big statement, but nevertheless true.  Your Resume document is about getting your foot in the door with a prospective employer so you can dazzle them with your skills and potential during the formal interview process.  Importantly, this document should always be truthful, but at the same time present the person in the best possible way.   

It’s within that context that people get carried away with overloading their Resume with lots of ‘whiz bang’ formatting and images to make the document sparkle.  As well as making the document often harder to read, too much ‘bling’ can bury the message you’re trying to deliver by making it a hard slog.  Putting that aside for the moment, there is another potential trap for those caught up in making their Resume sing and sparkle. 

Recruitment agencies and larger employers often use ‘applicant tracking systems’ as part of their recruitment management processes.  The software is known by various names, and you may have heard the term used along with recruitment and resume management software and candidate screening software amongst others. 

Without drilling into this too deeply, most larger employers and the recruitment industry in general use some form of screening software.

So, if you submit an application for the job you’ve been salivating about via Seek, Domain, and other ‘job search’ websites, the chances are your application (Resume and Covering Letter) will be scanned by the software.  Using a set of criteria set by the agency or employer, the software essentially scores the application, and if it doesn’t score high enough or match the criteria close enough it can be screened out and never seen by a set of human eyes.  Different document formats (Word, PDF, Txt, Publisher etc) and overdone formatting, imagery and other ‘bling’ is known to impact on the outcome of screening software.

So, the objective of your Resume writing, or that of the professional writer you engage, is to consider the screening software whilst developing a document with written punch!

Can we put it to you this way – Let the words do the talking, and tone down the bling.
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Present Professionally provides career services to clients across the Darling Downs and Queensland.  You can follow Anthony at https://au.linkedin.com/in/anthonyferro1  and LIKE us on Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/PresentProfessionallyAustralia/
 
 Written and Published by  www.presentprofessionally.com.au