What Employers Want

This short article mentioned an interesting survey conducted on employers in Orange County, CA. Here’s a link directly to the survey:

The 2010 Orange County Resume Survey

Anything that can help you gain some “inside information” when job hunting is always a good thing. I encourage you to click on the above link to read it in its entirety — it really does provide a nice snapshot of the opinions expressed by HR and hiring managers regarding topics such as résumés, cover letters, and what is most important to them.

I wanted to take the time to pull out some tidbits that caught my attention:

• On pages 18 and 19, the slides provided a cloud of words to include and a cloud of words to leave off. The slide with words to put on your resume/cover letter included (among many others): “team-player,” “multi-tasker,” and “innovative.” The next slide contained the cloud with words to exclude from your application materials; in almost the same size font were “team-player” and “innovative.” In a slightly smaller font, I saw that “multi-tasking” was also a word that some hiring managers dislike.

So what does this tell us? No matter what you do, there’s a possibility that some hiring managers will love your résumé, while others will hate it. Because of this fact, you should not knock yourself out trying to write the perfect résumé. Make sure that it is an accurate representation of you and your accomplishments, and go with it!

The slide presentation ends on page 23, but keep going because the specific details behind the survey results come next. Skip down to page 29 for some very interesting commentary.

Here’s a few common mistakes listed:

• “A common mistake is to write descriptions of jobs/positions rather than to write results. Quantifiable results tell a better story of job experience and accomplishments.“

• “…use of industry or company jargon or abbreviations.” (If an HR rep is screening your résumé, s/he may not be familiar with industry-specific acronyms and language.)

• “…Long sentences and longer paragraphs. I do not want a mini novel.”

• “Ridiculous email address” (If it’s challenging to spell because of repeated letters or is something like “2geeky4u@yahoo.com,” change it. Keep it simple — some version of first/last name or initials of your name is best.)

• “They list hypothetical qualifications: ‘I’m a team player who is motivated in a high stress environment. I will be the best team member at your workplace. . .blah blah blah.’ All applicants say they are going to do the BEST they ever did if you hire them…”

Here are some of the thoughts on what they are looking for in résumés:

• “Branding. Making sure that you speak to your audience and your resume ends up in the ‘to review further pile.’ Versus the circular file.”

• “Clean, clear, concise and easy to read in about 10 seconds.”

• “Job length, stability, experience (in that order)”

• “Relevancy. Accuracy. Skills.”

• “Results. What did you accomplish? What did you impact?”

• “Summary section at the top explaining the skills or experience that make the candidate a good fit for my position – don’t make me search through every line on the resume. Tell me how you’re a good fit.”

This comment was made in the section about action verbs that should be included: “I don’t look at action verbs because everyone thinks that this is what gets their resume to the top.” Several other comments in this part and the one on action verbs to exclude echoed a similar sentiment, so perhaps that is a growing trend.

Keywords are still important, but the message regarding action verb use seem to speak more to developing a résumé that is authentic to your experiences, not something canned.

There are many more interesting comments that I didn’t include here, so it’s worth it to follow the link provided above to read the survey for yourself!

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