Why is no one responding to my resume?

Is there something wrong with your resume that you are not getting any responses?

I was asked this question today by a frustrated job seeker who wanted help in fixing her resume.

My response follows:

I would be more than willing to look at your resume and offer suggestions, BUT it is essential that you share with me the job titles and company names of the openings to which you have applied.

Without knowing to what and where you have submitted your resume, I have little clue as to what should be in your resume.

Your resume is only as good as the specific keywords it contains as they match with the keywords of the job posting or description.

Also, most importantly, your qualifications have very little to do with whether or not you get any response to your resume.

The resume gatherers, the people to whom you send your resume, are screeners. Their job is to scan quickly resumes for keywords and send on those that have all, or at least a majority, of their target keywords.

They only have seconds to review a resume or applications and don't have time to read much of anything let alone think about what they see. In fact, in many cases, they have computer software scanning and finding the keywords for them.

The overwhelming, 90% of the time, reason why you don’t get responses is simply that resumes get lost in the heavy volume of them, in many cases 1000s, that are sent by desperate job seekers.

Your odds of ever getting any response to your resume or application, regardless of your qualifications, without following up repeatedly, is less than one in one thousand or .1%.

So playing the odds by just sending in your resume and/or submitting your application and waiting for a response means you would have to send in a resume or apply to at least 1000 openings to get one response!

You’ve got 900 more to go.

And, better still, you have one hundred with which you need to follow up.

Discover and determine the contact information for the company holding the job opening. Knowing specific contact people within the company, especially the hiring decision maker(s), makes all the difference in getting noticed. And without getting noticed, you probably won’t get a response.

If the company is not clearly identified, then do some detective work based on clues in the job posting like an email address or the type of business and location.

Then follow up with additional information like faxing another version of your resume or emailing your Facebook or LinkedIn link or dropping off your resume in person.

Repeated follow up has now become a requirement in making contact after you have sent your resume or applied for the job.

Let’s stay in touch,

Walt

And stay in touch with me and JVS at www.jvsdet.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

What's the use of resume keywords?

When jobs are posted, incoming resumes and applictions are screened to create a subset of applicants that are somewhat, in general, qualified.

The Good Enough category is necessary to get to the Choice Candidate category.

The overwhelming method of screening is based on determining a list of screener, or key, words. These keywords are used to filter IN resumes and applications that are to be moved along in the process, and screen OUT, eliminate, those that do not have at least a predetermined minimum of these words.

For example, someone with the job title of "secretary" on their resume, although they might be fully capable of performing, and experienced with, the duties of a receptionist, would be screened OUT and not included with the resumes moved along in the recruiting process. Without the keyword "receptionist" on their resume, they would be eliminated from consideration.

Your resume and application must have a majority, if not close to 100%, of those keywords to be included with those not eliminated during the initial screen.

I advised a job seeker about this and he took my advice word for word. He copied and pasted the actual job posting at the top of his resume under his contact information, titled the pasted ad "Summary of Skills" and emailed his resume as such to the company. He did not even delete the phrase "Equal Employment Opportunity Employer" from what he copied onto his resume.

He was called in for an interview within a couple days and offered the job!

Also, if you have an overwhelming number of other keywords not related to the position, you might also be excluded. Since the majority of your experience appears to be in something else or elsewhere, you will likely not fit the profile of a qualified candidate.

Whether or not the process is automated, computerized or manual, it is basically the same.

A job description is created formally or informally and a posting may come from that or be cobbled together on its own.

But, regardless of how this process goes, keywords are the filters, the criteria upon which the search for qualified candidates is based. Especially given the ginormous number of resumes and applications submitted nowadays.

First, foremost and exclusively, the lesson here is to use keywords in your resumes and applications that are not just synonymous but are exactly the same as the keywords in the job descriptions and postings to which you apply. And limit or exclude keywords that are not related to the positions for which you wish to be considered.

Unlike vampires, you must present a personal image which mirrors the image of the target job in order to survive the screen.

And if you think that this process of screening using keywords does not make sense for an employer considering huge numbers of applicants, consider this quote.

"If you think the products don't match what you want from a product, don't buy it." Donald Norman


If you want your resume pre-screened for keywords, please email BOTH your resume and the posting to which you are applying. My email address is wtarrow@jvsdet.org.

And be sure to check out our calendars of upcoming group meetings, seminars and events at http://www.jvsdet.org/ along with our job postings at http://www.parnossahworksdetroit.org/.

Remember, keywords are the key to get you past security and in the front door.