I'm currently looking for work :(
I've submitted my resume to many places. Many of them use
brassring.com or taleo.com which have their own ideas on how to
handle your resumes. Other places, like EDS have their own software
for parsing resumes. Even the State of Indiana uses some bastardized
module in Peoplesoft that they have yet to properly configure, as I'm
able to request my salary in any of the 199 available currency
denominations.
First, some of the sites have a 100k limit on the resume you can
upload. I'm a relatively senior guy with a loaded 2-page resume which
comes out to 120+k in Word or OpenOffice. I got around this by
converting it to PDF and having a 98k resume.
Then there is the parsing. I keep my resume simple. No real boxes or
funky formatting. Just dates, companies, and descriptions. No funky
"skills listing" or multiple-paragraph objective shit. Their auto-
parsers will skip entire sections, replace dates as the names of
former companies and other such nonsense. If I wasn't seriously
needing a paycheck I'd leave the resumes that butchered as an example
of how horrid their systems are.
Instead I wind up having to delete anything that they auto-parsed and
commit several cut-n-paste exercises to convey the important parts of
my resume to these employers.
Likely I won't wind up with any callbacks because some HR dweeb with
an IQ of 2 won't realize that a CISSP isn't a job function but a
separate certification that is listed under the certification section
of the resume.
-Jon
