Page 29 - Marky Stein - Get a Great Job When You Don't Have a Job-McGraw-Hill (2009)

Get a Great Job When You Don’t Have a Job

Do you know that it takes only three to seven seconds for a reader
to determine whether your résumé goes in the “yes” pile or gets
deleted or thrown in a paper shredder? Well, it’s true.
Over 17 years as a career coach in almost constant contact
with employers, recruiters, human resources representatives,
and, of course, job seekers gives me an inside view of what really
goes on when you submit your résumé to a company or small
business.

What’s Going On Behind the Scenes?

It has been estimated that when a job is advertised in a major
metropolitan newspaper and on a few key Internet job sites, a
human resources staffer or hiring manager may have as many as
350 résumés crowding his inbox or the corner of his desk on a
daily basis. Do you think that such a person reads every one of
those résumés from start to finish? The answer, you may be sur-
prised to find out, is no.
It takes a very special résumé to grab your reader’s attention
and keep her reading all the way through when she may have
already seen and thrown away 200 résumés before getting to
yours. That’s just the kind of résumé you’re going to have by the end of
this Section.
How, then, do we know how to write that special résumé?
Did we learn it in school? Probably not. Did our parents show us
how to do it? Maybe, but has the result worked for you? Have you
ever read a book or seen a career counselor who could really tell
you that magic formula that you could repeat, again and again,
to achieve the same favorable results? If not, why not?
The fact is that too many people and the majority of books
about résumés focus on the résumé itself rather than turning their
target to deep down inside the emotions and the mind of the
reader.
If you’re going to get an interview by sending someone your
résumé when there are almost 349 competitors a day up against
you, you’re going to need to know more than just how to write
something neat and clean that lists your job history on it; you
need inside, tested, and proven particulars about how to make
that employer pick your résumé.

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