How your resume is like a sandwich - and why no one is ordering it.

HR managers are searching. But they can't find you.

That carefully worded resume of yours is sliced and diced by the HR department’s Applicant Tracking System(ATS). As a result, many applicants fall by the wayside. 

One company that sells their own version of an ATS did an experiment last year, creating the ‘perfect’ resume(in terms of keyword matches) for an open position. The ATS they tested (Taleo, one of the most common) parsed their 'perfect' resume so poorly that one of the jobs on their resume was listed as a skill, creating a gap in work history! One job location was missed completely.  Several educational components were just… dropped by the system. The result was that the 'perfect' candidate was considered 43% qualified.

Jake Firth wrote an industry whitepaper a few years ago and found that for the particular drop-down box they selected for tracking, 83% of applicants entered the wrong information.

83%! So even if the ATS does a perfect job, your long hours logging information into automated systems means you're likely to make errors. 

I think of it like making a sandwich: 

First, you, the chef, create your  sandwich(“resume”) using the finest ingredients:

• Fresh baked rye
• Black forest ham
• Freshly washed butter lettuce
• Organic heirloom tomatoes

Second, the Applicant Tracking System breaks your sandwich down and notes the following ingredients:

• bread
• meat, ham
• butter
• lettuce
• tomatoes

Unknown terms – the ones you’re most proud of - are discarded or put into other places: black-forest, organic, heirloom. Are we really to that point where you might as well turn in a list of keywords instead of a resume?

Unfortunately, the ATS is in charge of writing the menu, so when the Hiring Manager, who has a hankering for a black forest ham sandwich, searches for exactly that, instead of finding you, they find someone who listed ham ONLY, listed ham first, or they don’t find anything at all and have to resort to a search for ‘honey baked’ ham instead.

Your search for ‘black forest ham’ has yielded 8,369,187 results. 

Even worse, let’s say they DO find you in their ATS and they see that your ham sandwich includes butter. Yuck. Is it fried? They also see your sandwich is 'organic', and that conjures up the wrong image for them. You’re disqualified.

At the very least, your sandwich looks pretty boring, doesn’t it?

So what’s the answer for the job-seeker who has painstakingly written that amazing resume – or even paid upwards of $300 to have their two pages of text perfected? As you can see, the answer isn’t submitting a resume through an ATS. The answer is making a difference, getting noticed. According to every job board I’m reading, the difference-makers for getting hired is almost always one of two things:

• Personal contacts, and
• Standing out professionally.

So rather than wasting your time with another 30 resume submissions into automated systems or online, make a few phone calls to find the hiring manager and send them something different by way of introduction. 

An infographic version of your resume is just one example. You could also try to improve your social presence and contact that person via LinkedIn or Twitter, something different than the (incorrect) spreadsheet program they're slogging through all day. Jim Kukral has a few other thoughts, including Facebook and YouTube. The fact that this is posted on a manufacturing website should tell you that getting creative is something Mr. Kukral is very good at.

It’s never been more important to be different: when an ATS boils your work experience into a handful of words that aren’t even correct, you know you’ve got to try something with a bit more style!

Hey, it's your sandwich, your best work, and you know your customer will love it. Whatever you do, don't rely on some autobot version of your work to represent YOU!

Tony Markey is the Founder and President of nuzume, LLC, creator of the nuzume, a visual, infographic resume..

Is the resume DEAD? Survey

Applicant Tracking Systems. Applicant keyword searches. Social media checks. LinkedIn. Twitter. Facebook.

Do you even NEED a resume? Is the resume dead?

'Alas, poor resume. I knew him well.'

This short survey for hiring managers, recruiters, coaches, and resume writers seeks to determine if the resume as we know it has a future - or if it's being replaced by newer resume formats, research, or applicant tracking systems.

Thank you for participating! 
Is the resume dead?

Survey will run through February 15th or until we have 100 responses from hiring managers and recruiters. The results will be interesting - and we'll definitely post them here!

-Tony

Tony Markey is the Founder and President of nuzume, LLC, creator of the nuzume, a visual, infographic resume..

Job Market: Hope and Despair from Seth Godin

Marketing guru Seth Godin's piece on Business Insider yesterday had a couple of great points regarding the job market in general and all our futures specifically.

First, he said if you're an 'average worker', then it's over, courtesy of the decline of the industrial revolution(or a post-industrial society). Gulp. He added that if you're looking for this kind of average work and expecting to be paid above average wages, 'never mind the race to the top, you'll be racing to the bottom.'

His second point was more intriguing: That 'if you're different somehow and have made yourself unique, people will find you and pay you more.' 

This is why the nuzume's design is so important. It demonstrates your differences, your uniqueness, and in a way that's very powerful. Careerbuilder's advice includes instructions to 'make your achievements stand out' rather than listing duties. The nuzume's ProChrono(tm) specifically highlights your achievements and makes them quantifiable - in a graph, no less.

Monster says your resume should have good keywords in it. That's exactly the purpose of the nuzume's SkillsCloud(tm) - a keyword-rich word cloud designed to get the attention of the hiring manager using weighted word sizes that correlate to your top skills.

All of this coincides with another insightful tidbit from Seth Godin in a different blog post regarding the resume: Mr. Godin critiques modern websites' attempts at similarity to their competitors, all the while bemoaning that consumers search for the lowest cost product in their market. Shouldn't businesses that want their customers to pay more try to look and feel different from their competitors? Similarly, if you want an employer to pay more for your services, shouldn't you give them a different look than everyone else?

If you want the one position they're offering to 100 candidates, if you want more money than anyone else, or if you just want to get NOTICED - shouldn't your resume look different than the other 100 they get?


Tony Markey is the Founder and President of nuzume, LLC, creator of the ‘nuzume’, a visual, infographic resume created for their clients.

Why you DO want an infographic resume (and why you DON'T!)

Here’s a breakdown of the pros and cons of having an infographic resume:

Why don’t you want one? CONS:

1. They’re not infographic. Infographics are all the buzz since images rank higher than text for bloggers. As a result, everyone is scrapping together pictures and calling them infographics. They’re not. Graphic artists create what they call infographic resumes, but which are really just fancy fonts and cutesy logos. So-called infographic resumes put a title in a box, the box on a timeline, and “ta-daa!” Infographic. Not really. The classic infographic uses data to display something visually. Check out tableau software for some stunning examples. Infographics don't rely on bunnies or comic sans fonts, on colorful faux graphs or forcing words into boxes. An infographic is a visual interpretation of data, not the newest version of the colored paper resume trick.
2. Infographic resumes don’t contain the right information. We take a look at the competition all the time, and time and again, they have stuff like photos, your twitter account, daily activities, and questions like do you want to work for a private or public company. That’s not what employers tell us they want to see – and in fact, those types of questions could disqualify you. Hiring Managers want a) skills and b) achievements. Most infographic resumes only barely touch on these two important aspects of your resume. No wonder they’re ineffective! 
3. Infographic resumes are “new”. To an old-school hiring manager, they could mean that you’re too progressive for consideration. Of course, you may want to appear progressive, but let’s face it, some hiring managers might not like it, just like they might dislike the combination resume, bold typefaces, or any of a dozen other resume ideas they believe are ‘not standard’. 

Why do you want one? PROS:

1. Infographics get you noticed. In today’s economy and with the constant barrage of visual messages we receive every day, two pages of text is absolutely not going to set you apart. A well-conceived, infographic resume can get you noticed in ways you might not even imagine. Just ask Chris Spurlock, who landed a job with Huffington Post after his infographic resume went viral.
2. It says you’re creative and tech-savvy. Something out of the box is an indication to a prospective employer that you are different than the other interviewees they’ve talked to. It sets you apart as someone current and ‘cutting edge.’
3. It’s a great conversation piece. Let’s face it, walking into an interview and handing a prospective employer your resume can be an awkward moment. Handing them a couple pages of dry text is rather, well, ‘blah.’ A visual resume can be a warm conversation starter, and isn’t that what a good interview is – a conversation?

A good infographic resume will say a lot more about you than a good resume. Using visual imagery to convey your experience in pictures is, as they say, worth a thousand words!

Tony Markey is the Founder and President of nuzume, LLC, creator of the ‘nuzume’, a visual, infographic resume created for their clients.

3 Reasons Your Resume Isn't Getting Read

We spend so much time on our 1-2 page text resume, agonizing over keywords and honing our skills and experience.

Here's a little secret: those words you've written so painstakingly may not get read. EVER.

Today's hiring process is different than it was even a few years ago - here are three reasons your resume may end up in the trash heap despite your best efforts.

1) Hiring managers don't read resumes. They scan them - either into their applicant tracking system(ATS) or visually. They look for pieces they are interested in, not the beautiful prose you've painstakingly created. In essence, you might as well send them a list of keywords, because that's what they're looking for initially.

2) Your resume isn't quantifiable. Most resumes show your responsibilities, your activities, but not what you've accomplished. Achievements are most attention-grabbing when they're numerical, quantifiable, and that's a rare item to find on a traditional resume. Hiring managers tell us they're looking for a candidate's accomplishments, not just a bulleted list of tasks they performed. In other words, they're not reading resumes because they're not written well. Admittedly, the resume is a bit of a dinosaur - a text-based product in a visual world. The resume is DOS and we want to present ourselves in Windows(or IOS. Or Linux). DOS was effective in it's day. Can we blame hiring managers if they don't read them when they reflect neither a) what we've DONE nor b) the best way to present what we've done?

3) Applicant Tracking Systems(ATS) are the standard. They are the online dating services of the hiring industry. If you're in their ATS, you might get noticed. Maybe. If you've entered the right keywords and skills that they happen to be looking for that day. Much like a dating service, if you've indicated your desire to work in a team environment and they're looking for someone to work independently, you're out. If you listed a skill as 'manager' and they search 'management', they may miss you too. It's an imperfect system

So why have a resume at all? Almost reflexively, hiring managers still ask for them - and at some point in the interview process, you're going to need one if only for that reason. To be sure, if you're being seriously considered, your resume will be read - but expecting your resume to get you in the door is a lie resume writers tell their would-be clients. Your resume is a lead-in, a spec sheet, an advertisement, and having a good ad is important - but you're the product!

This may be the reason why the nuzume we create is being received so well - everyone knows the resume is faulty by design and being utilized less and less. Why not present your personal 'advertisement' in a way that is visually appealing, creative, and tech-savvy?


www.nuzume.com