If you are still using clichés or buzzwords like energetic, focused, passionate, motivated, and team player in your Resume and LinkedIn profile, you will forever remain in the big black hole of the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Never to be seen again.
And yes, together with the other hundreds of thousands who didn’t listen, who think they know better, or just didn’t bother to study best practice in how to present themselves on the job market.
Ever wondered why you never get invited to a job interview?
If you are sure that you have relevant experience from the particular industry and functional area, but still don’t get a call, I bet it’s all about your resume that has failed to impress. No job interview means no job offer!
The ATS is an application software that manages the recruiting and hiring process. International executive search firms and large corporate multi-national companies would have invested big sums for such software. The ATS manages job postings and job applications; it organises and makes searchable information about applicants and candidates.
But the ATS is not necessarily your friend, if you don’t understand the Artificial Intelligence algorithms that are at work behind the scenes. The goal of using the expensive ATS is simply to help third-party recruiters and HR professionals to conduct preliminary search and check of keywords in the candidate profile.
Keywords are really important to you. Vitally important. If you choose the right keywords in your resume and online profile, it will increase your chances of getting noticed and then contacted by a recruiter.
A research of buzzwords from the last five years shows a major change from personal strengths to highlighting experience and skills instead. The word “successful” is no longer a buzzword, it’s no longer a Top 10 keyword for the first time since 2015. Interestingly, it’s now words like “skilled” that have become popular.
Remove vague buzzwords that add little value and are typically used by thousands of other candidates. Recruiters are not searching for these words anyway.
Be careful of being overly creative with your resume because ATS and robots like structure. Drop the two-column design, with your skills on the left and your jobs on the right. Drop using the Header or Footer as some ATS systems will choke and never get into the actual resume.
Two examples, one wrong and one correct way of writing
Wrong: Hardworking and highly motivated executive with strong management skills, with extensive experience leading cross-department teams.
Correct: Managed a 7-member cross-functional team of product, engineering, supply chain and sales; coordinated with four other business partners to launch an e-commerce platform within only six months.
Length of resume and number of pages and bullet points
The best-in-class resume will have between 500 and 700 words. With your resume already open in Microsoft Word, use the Review and then Word Count to check how long your Resume really is. Research of thousands of resumes has found that this word count combines the right balance between white space and depth of details.
You must have heard or read about the 6-seconds rule; that is the time we recruiters take to skim your resume, to decide if we put it aside for a closer look later on – or if it’s return to sender (read: back in the ATS Black Hole).
Notice please, I say skim and not read, because obviously we cannot read two pages in six seconds. Needless to say, but I better do it anyway, you must make sure that you optimise your resume for the six-second skim.
In my 16 years of headhunting candidates for jobs in Thailand, the debate on the ideal resume length has gone from Twitter-like 140 characters to one page to three pages and to the now universally accepted two pages.
I am not saying that you will get rejected just because you send in three or more pages, it’s a fact that recruitment consultants or talent acquisition experts will spend less time on each page with the risk of missing your key messages and achievements.
Number of bullet points under Work Experience
Using bullet points to list your achievements under each work experience will make it easier to read, and if each bullet line is indented it’s easy to separate your various employments.
Aim for somewhere between a total of 10 to 20 bullet points in your work experience area. If you cover a career 10-15 years or more, you can go to 20. Make sure each bullet is one or no more than two lines. Otherwise they will be too clunky.
If you find yourself with less than 10 bullet points, you have not listed enough unique achievements to likely make a real impact. On the other hand, with over 20 bullet points there is a risk of presenting less relevant points and of not getting the right attention.
Your current job experience should have more bullet points than earlier jobs. The further back you go, the less bullets do you need. Recruiters focus on the current and last 10 to 15 years anyway.
Achievements or Accomplishments much better than Responsibility
Achievement or accomplishment? As we love saying in Thailand: Same same but different. An achievement is a goal that has been reached. An accomplishment is a job or project that has been completed.
You don’t have to tell us what a Sales Manager is doing (or whatever title you have). Or what people do in Accounting, HR or Production. Don’t worry, we know.
If you want to get invited for interviews with top companies, your resume must demonstrate impact to stand out. It greatly helps to use numbers and metrics that provide quantifiable examples of your achievements. Putting numbers, periods, percentages, and results make your bullet points a lot more meaningful, since they show the recruiter how your work experience has impacted the companies you worked at.
Author: Tom Sorensen is a Partner at Boyden Thailand, a global Top 10 executive search firm. Contact tsorensen@boyden.com; learn more on www.boyden.com/tom-sorensen and www.boyden.co.th
Series Editor: Christopher F. Bruton is Executive Director of Dataconsult Ltd, chris@dataconsult.co.th. Dataconsult’s Thailand Regional Forum provides seminars and extensive documentation to update business on future trends in Thailand and in the Mekong Region.