3 Ways to Avoid the Resume Black Hole
So many resumes end up overlooked by hiring managers, disqualified at first glance. What makes an employer reject a resume after a quick skim? One of the biggest mistakes job seekers make is not tailoring their resume to a job posting. Sending out your resume to multiple job openings without altering it is one of the quickest ways for your resume to get sucked into the resume black hole, never to be considered by a hiring manager.
The average recruiter only looks at a resume for 6 seconds. With so little time, here are 3 strategies to make sure your resume isn’t overlooked:
1.) Have someone proof read your resume.
Grammatical errors or typos are a sure way to turn off an employer. Some apartment listing jobs rake in multitudes of applicants, and the smallest error could put you behind your competition. No matter how many times you look over your resume, another pair of eyes will be the best way to make sure it’s flawless.
2.) Match the job posting with your resume.
Employers in the apartment industry can spot when you’ve given them the same resume that has already been used to apply for other positions. Make sure your resume stands out by including how your job experience and skills uniquely fit the position a property has posted.
How do you do this? One of the best ways is to use the same keywords that a job post has, as sometimes employers use a computer to scan resumes for word matches. This doesn’t mean that you should cut and paste from a job description, but make sure your resume speaks directly to an apartment job’s requirements.
3.) Follow up with an employer.
While it is good practice to write an email or make a phone call to follow up with an employer after you have applied for a position, you also need to have a strategy for how you do so. A generic email is not going to go over well with an employer; but a heartfelt, original one might. Likewise, in a competitive job market like Austin, where apartment jobs are in high demand, dropping your resume off in person can make you more memorable. Don’t ever be pushy or demanding in these interactions, but to show genuine interest.
It may take just one wrong item on your resume to get it tossed into the black hole of resumes; but using these three techniques will make your chances of getting noticed exponentially higher.
*Recruiter statistics from The Recruiter’s Lounge.