With Fred Coon
20 Pet Peeves Recruiters Have About Resumes
Courtesy of Mike Worthington, ResumeDoctor.com
# 4 – Incomplete Contact Info
Jennifer Baker of Inter*Link Technology Solutions in Daytona Beach, FL shares, “I think that candidates often don’t think about what might happen to their resumes once they hit a recruiter. Many of the resumes I get now are electronic in form, so the resume does not stay attached to the candidate’s e-mail for long. Any candidates who are seriously seeking a position should make it as easy as possible for a recruiter to contact them regarding their credentials. That means providing as many ways to contact the candidate as possible.”
It is imperative that your complete contact info be easy to read and at the top of the page. This includes your full name, phone numbers, (home, cell and a daytime number), home and email addresses. Noah Rahm of ResumeDoctor.com explains, “At least 1 out of 7 resumes that are submitted to us for assistance do not have an email address on them. In this day and age, it is like not including a phone number. I recently had a candidate not include any contact info on his resume. When asked about such, his response was that it was on his cover letter. Who is to say that the cover letter will make it from Contact A to Contact B and all the way to the hiring manager?”
Speaking of email addresses, your address should be professional. Recruiters shared with us that they do receive the occasional resume with an email address such as hot-sexy-kitten@yahoo, son-of-satan@hotmail, beer-guzzler@hotmail, etc. Remember, a resume will be the first impression an employer or recruiter will have of you, so make it a good one!
As discussed in last week’s article, do not use the headers and footers feature in Word to include your contact info. This requires recruiters and hiring managers to manually put this information into their database. As also discussed, many job seekers use the standard Word template format. Not only do most candidates often pick a very small font size for their contact info, which requires the reader to set his/her screen display to the 150% setting, but also your contact info will most likely be lost when it is entered into a HR recruiting system. Furthermore, do not shade your contact info in gray, use fancy hard to read fonts or graphical lines around such. If your resume is more than one page, it is often a good idea to include your name, phone number and email address on page 2.
In closing, whenever your contact info changes, make sure any and all recruiters you are working with or have in the past, are updated. If anything, it offers a great excuse to touch base again. You never know what new requisition just came across their desk. Being on the top of their mind can never hurt.
Recruiter Tip: With the many ISP’s changing hands everyday or going out of business, create a permanent email address. There are plenty of free services out there such as Yahoo or Hotmail. Many candidates opt to use a work email address. It is often not a good idea to do so, for two major reasons. One, what if you leave that position? How will a recruiter be able to email you a new posting? Two, many employers monitor their employee’s email boxes. This could compromise your current position.
Recruiter’s likes and dislikes in a resume were surveyed nation-wide by Mike Worthington of ResumeDoctor.com. FACE to FACE will publish all twenty pet peeves in this column over the next months.
ResumeDoctor.com is a service provided by Personnel Department Inc. PDI is Vermont’s largest independently owned staffing agency. They have been locally owned and operated for over 14 years. They have been featured in many publications, TV news programs, and radio broadcasts. You may contact them at: http://www.resumedoctor.com.