Templates? | JobSearchTV.com
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
(From the archives) In this video, Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter attempts to discourage you from using resume templates.
Don’t Have Your Resume Rejected by The Applicant Tracking System
Hi, I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter. I want to talk with you today about resume templates. Now, first of all, there are millions of them all over the web and, frankly, don’t use them. I’m just going to make it that simple. Don’t use them. Here’s why. And then there are a couple of reasons.
Number one is you have to comply with our format. And, yes, you can shop for lots of different formats. Do you really want to take that time? Number two is, the issue isn’t the template or the format. The issue is the content that you’re putting out. You may say it’s attractive. It presents very nicely, but it causes problems for the reader. Here’s how all of us, whether we’re a corporation or a recruiting firm, are using applicant tracking systems. We’re looking to parse data into our systems. We’re not manually rekeying things We don’t want to copy your resume and paste it into our system. All of our software, again, no matter whether we’re corporate or agency, are parsing resumes into fields that work well.
A lot of the templates have embedded headers. Problem. A lot of parsing software doesn’t work with that. You have to manually re-key. You’re a pain in the ass at that point. Number two is sometimes people aren’t cognizant of how there’s, your text is fitting into the template. So there are times I see resumes, where it’s cut off midfield mid-sentence because a person didn’t pay attention to the fact that the resume, the text that they had written, didn’t fit into the field that was assigned by the template, so it just scrolls out of view. So you always have to take a look at it.
But the real issue is about parsing and ensuring that your resume is parsable by all of us who are receiving it. For big companies, the issues around government reporting. They’re gonna delete your resume if it doesn’t parse is really what it comes down to. So if you’re submitting a template, you have problems associated that you’re not conscious of, but you’re impacted by. I also want to mention that really don’t send your resume directly to employers. There are a lot of reasons for that I cover in other videos. But if you’re sending it to a recruiting firm, you don’t want to be a problem resume for them. You just want to give them great information. And frankly, most of the templates don’t even look that good. You can copy the look of the template, that’s fine, but don’t actually use one.
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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, as well as executive job search coaching, job coaching, and interview coaching. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2400 episodes.
Are you interested in 1:1 coaching, interview coaching, advice about networking more effectively, how to negotiate your offer or leadership coaching? People hire me to provide No BS career advice whether that is about a job search, hiring better, leadership, management or support with a workplace issue. Schedule a discovery call at my website, www.TheBigGameHunter.us
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