Why Job Seekers Aren’t Getting Responses From Employers

Nov. 18, 2011 - PRLog -- CHICAGO, IL – Almost all job seekers in the current employment market have experienced the frustration of not hearing back from a potential employer. Why is my resume not getting a response?

CV Quo, Inc. conducted a focus group of ten job seekers, representing different demographics as well as type of positions they were looking for. The majority of the group described their recent job search as “exhausting,” even “like playing the resume lotto.”

The reality is that HR departments are flooded with more resumes than ever before. This makes it difficult for great candidates to stand out and just as difficult for hiring managers to find the qualified people they’re looking for. Sometimes with as many as a thousand applications for a single position, HR departments only have a few seconds to get an impression from a resume. This is why it’s so important to effectively communicate your key value points right away.

Here are some tips to make sure your resume draws the right kind of attention:

Focus on the top 1/3 of the page
- when scanning quickly, hiring managers need to get the essential information about you quickly and effectively
- have clearly defined objective, differentiators, and key skills right at the top, it gives the reader a snapshot of who you are
- clean and simple fonts are best, but still draw attention to key information through bolding or underlining

Tailor your resume to the position
- Demonstrate why an experience makes you more qualified and an asset to the company by highlighting experiences that best the position you’re seeking
- Do so by going more in depth with your descriptions or by creating a section such as “applicable experience”

Describe your experiences
- Use bullet points or a short description to tell the reader what exactly you accomplished at each previous position
- Use active words that demonstrate your worth by identifying and highlighting areas where you took full ownership (ex: launched, created, drove, produced; as opposed to: assisted, helped, continued)
- You can always tailor these descriptions to the position you are seeking as well

References
- These may not be a part of your resume directly, but they go hand in hand – so be sure you have up-to-date references
- Have your references verified, this way HR departments will know they can be trusted and it shows you have taken further initiative
- Interested in having your references verified? CVQuo.com verifies and stores references for you so you can reuse them [http://www.cvquo.com/cvq/candidates.html]

Other tips
- If your resume must be more than one page, place pertinent experience to the first page for more visibility
- Don’t use a font that is too small or hard to read, nothing is worse than an illegible resume
- Make sure your resume looks good on your computer as well as in on paper – print out a test!
- Don’t be afraid to add extra things that make you stand out, whether it’s special computer skills, certifications, or volunteering experience
- Constantly update and improve your resume, if your current resume isn’t garnering responses, change your approach

Small changes in your resume, your first impression to any potential employer, can make a big difference in your job search.  

To get continuous updates on how to improve your job search process follow us on http://www.twitter.com/cvquo or http://www.facebook.com/cvqscore

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CV Quo, Inc. is an organization dedicated to establishing a “Recruitment Metric.” CV Quo’s scoring model helps job seekers promote their professional value, companies save cost, and recruiters identify the right talent.