Getting to Know You: Part One-Your Resume
(For more on optimizing your resume, see "Resume Myths: Formatting", and "Resume Myths: Content" on our website)
We want to find you. We really do. In fact, we spend much time and effort seeking out qualified candidates to present to our clients.
Where’s the first place we look? Our internal, confidential, proprietary database. If you are not in there, you should be. The easiest way to get there? Submit your resume to us –after you review your resume to make sure you are not committing the following sins:
Yes, resumes are now electronically uploaded into Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), and yes, we use an ATS, too. However, humans still read your resume. Really.
If you are one of the offenders, review the keywords in that paragraph-long list. If, for example, EMR/EHR is in that list, and you in fact DO have experience with that technology, make sure it is included in description of the appropriate position(s) you’ve held. Yes, we and our ATS will see it when we search for that expertise.
Simply listing it on its own does not provide us with a sense of the context, your expertise and experience with it.
In our initial search, we seek these criteria: job function, modalities/fields of expertise, and location. Make absolutely sure your job functions and fields of expertise are included in your resume. Do not be vague, as this does not entice us to call you. If you happen to be a clinical implementation specialist within the EHR or PACS/RIS or CT sectors-we will not know if it is not on your resume.
There is an inherent risk in being too general on your resume-you make us work to hard to determine your skills and, when you do that, we move on
Blind Resumes -We see many of these, and they frustrate us. Blind resumes are those with no name or contact info, and no employer names or position titles in the experience section.
While this “confidential” resume may be appropriate when posting on resume giant sites such as Monster or Career Builder, we need to know who you are (we like to call you by name and treat you like the professional human you are), where you call home and who you’ve worked for and in what capacity.
If you do not want to put your home address on your resume, then get a PO box in the city you live in. Our clients’ career opportunities are located all over the country, and are usually based in one of the 50 states, so we need to know where you are.
Reputable recruiters treat ALL resumes and candidate information as confidential. We do not share your information outside of our firm and never submit your resume to an employer for a position without your prior approval.
Complicated Resume Formatting -Photos, graphics, logos, tables, headers/footers, and multi-color, multi-font text. Back in the days when resumes were submitted, via snail mail, to an HR representative, there were too many articles published suggesting you use as many of these “toys” as possible to make your resume stand out from the resume pile.
Even then it was usually a turn-off. Too many distracting elements overpowered the actual content; making it very difficult for the reader to easily find your qualifications.
Guess what? The ATS software many of us use in the present day has the same issues with these “overloaded” resumes. All of this unnecessary formatting clogs the system and prevents the ATS from extracting the important info mentioned above from your resume and into our database.
Keep it Simple. Please.
Yes, we humans here at TBA do read your resume, but if yours is one we have to hand-input or reformat, it delays processing and potentially places your resume at the bottom of the pile-exactly the opposite of the intended effect of all that formatting to begin with.
Transfer that time and effort you would spend on the resume formatting to the resume content (See "Resume Myths: Content" on our website)
Send it to us!
Have you reviewed and corrected your resume sins? Good. Submit it to us now through our website. Your info will easily get into our database, and be searchable for all the right elements. Don’t forget to include your phone number and e-mail address because, when your name comes up in our search, we want to call you.
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