When you send in your resume when applying for a job, the odds are it will get thrown away before it is read. Here are 3 tips on how you can avoid this fate and increase your chances for landing a job.

 

One thing hiring managers nearly all agree on is that it is easier to throw away a resume with a small problem than it is to read the whole thing.

 
 

How Do Hiring Managers Select Resumes In Order To Schedule Interviews?

Rather than spending a lot of time finding the right fit for a position, the recruiter’s job is to discard as many applicants resumes as possible. The goal is to toss as many in hopes that the ones left (because they can’t think of a good reason to toss them) can be called in for interviews.

 
 

This sounds counterintuitive. However, many believe it is necessary because of the numbers of resumes they receive.

Why the Chances are not good for your Resume being Read

 
 

Why Your Resume’s Chances Are Not Good For Being Read:

For any given job, there could be hundreds or thousands of applications. For the most part, many of them are not appropriate for the position. The job recruiter’s task is to filter out the bad ones as quickly as possible. This is so that the hiring company can call in the few truly qualified applicants as soon as possible.

 
 

The job recruiter’s situation is very understandable. It is just not possible to read each and every resume completely. It would just take too many resources. So, their job is to toss as many ‘near misses’ as possible in hopes of actually finding someone they can use and work with.

 
 

What makes a resume that gets read?

How do they decide which resumes make the cut to actually being read by someone who can actually hire you? Basically, rather than looking at the good things in your resume like leadership, skills, or experience, they look for problems. The problems may not have anything to do with your potential as a future employee. For example, if there are grammatical errors in your resume, you get tossed. If the font or point size isn’t to their liking, you get tossed. And, if they don’t see the keywords they are looking for, you get tossed. The plain truth is, most recruiters don’t have any idea of what your technical skills mean, they just look for reasons to discard your resume. There are a lot more reasons for having your resume rejected than there are for getting it accepted.

 
 

How can you create a resume that gets read by the right people?

So, how can you make it through this system so that you can get your resume read by someone with the power to hire you? It is simple; you need to do a little preparation before sending in your resume in order to      improve the odds of you getting an interview.

 
 

• Have your resume/application proofed by someone who knows grammar and who can fix any problem. When it comes to getting hired, correct grammar counts.
• Use plenty of white space in your resume to make it as readable as possible. Recruiters will only spend a few seconds looking at your resume. And, if they can’t easily read it, you won’t be getting a call for an interview.
• Use the keywords on the job announcement in your resume. Again, the people filtering out resumes don’t know what you do and don’t care. Their job is to look for specific keywords. And, those keywords can be found in the job announcement. Echo those words in your resume.

 
 

The 3 tips for getting your resume read review

In order to handle the large number of resumes that can come in for a single position, recruiters have to spend as little time as possible reading each one. The quicker they can dispatch a resume to the recycle bin, the quicker they can get through the pile. Don’t give the recruiters any reason to toss your resume before someone in power can see it.

 
 

Make sure your resume is grammatically perfect. Use lots of white space in your resume to make it easy to read. And, echo back the terminology used in the job announcement in your resume.

Finding a job is hard enough. Get hired by making your resume as ‘toss proof’ as possible.