“It’s a mystery that begs for a solution: Unemployment is the No. 1 issue in America — yet virtually all business people I talk to complain that they can’t find the workers they want.”
That’s the excuse in San Antonio. It isn’t the lack of skill sets. It’s the freaking software that is weeding out potential candidates.
Example: A job description is written. On it are 10 things the incumbent must know. Those 10 things are now fed into a program which runs a query on the resumes and looks for key words. If it doesn’t find all 10, the resume is discarded. (Saved in the system for X is how the rejection letter looks)
So what is missing? Well, I prefer to look at someone who has a good chunk of the skills, worked for companies whose IT departments are progressive and where IT professionals get good experience. Also, what kind of person is the candidate. These are intangibles that a query engine cannot determine.
Are there qualified people out there? Of course. They are more qualified than the HR department that has a program do for them what they used to do themselves.
Which is why anyone still using a one page resume is shooting themselves in the foot.
Computer programs search through the text of resumes looking for keywords and phrases. It discards the resumes that don’t contain all the search keywords/phrases.
The solution? Keyword stuffing.
Use as many pages as you need (the more actually the better) and make sure your resume contains every keyword needed. If you are applying for a job, look at the job descritpion, and make sure every keyword/buzzword/technical-jargon used in the ad is somewhere in your resume. Even if you have to just tag it at the end under some heading like “Additional Skills”.
BTW, the other thing to remember is nobody prints out resumes anymore. The pull up a copy on a computer, which means the most important part of your resume is the top half of the first page. That’s all they can see on the computer screen, and if that doesn’t hook them they aren’t going to look at the rest of your resume.
Nodoby reads resumes anymore. They use a computer to filter resumes based on keyword, and GLANCE at the top half of the first page. If you’re looking for a job, those are the two areas you should concentrate on.