> I want to review 2 pages. I want the content to be fulfilling. I want > the fonts and formats to be spot on. I want to be able to say, > promising, has the elements I'm looking for, let's invite him to present > his portfolio ....
Agreed. Perhaps I have high expectations, but that's not a bad thing when hiring... I want to see if the candidate is paying attention and is addressing the needs that the job posting advertised. If I'm looking for a tech writer with SDK documentation experience and stong knowledge of OO programming, I really don't care to read about their success back in 1986 when they documented a workflow around a manufacturing issue. Interesting, yes. Useful, perhaps, Relevant, no. > Why 2 pages? Because I have my regular job to do and, oh by the way, 12 > resumes to read, a half-dozen interviews to conduct, for which I have no > time, so I want two pages. Time's an important one but this speaks to organization, style, and layout more than length. Honestly, as a hiring manager I'd spend maybe the first 15 seconds scanning the resume looking for anything that pops out. If something does, I immediately switch from scanning to reading. If nothing pops out at me, the resume usually sits to the side if I have others to look at, and then depending on how many interesting ones I've read, I might give the side pile another look through. I'm certainly not the only one who does this, by far. And for a tech writing candidate, organization of content is key. > Why care about fonts? Having received resumes with curiously bad font > choices, I have to say if it's the first or second resume, I might not > disregard a resume with fonts that I PERCEIVE as difficult to read, but > by the time I hit my third resume, forget it, timing was not on your > side. I don't care about fonts as long as it's clean. Comic Sans and such do put me off a bit (why you'd use a "kid" font on a resume, I dunno - do you submit hand-written applications in crayon?)... > Why care about layout? Make the resume easy to read, use indents and > white space to help me find my way through, be consistent in the > application of styles, reduce, reduce, reduce, the number of fonts used > (please, one is fine, sometimes two). Layout can be highly effective or extremely dangerous in getting a job. I look for clean basic formatting that draws attention to why I want to consider the candidate for an interview. The most effective resumes I've come across use very basic formatting, bullets instead of sentences/paragraphs, and make use of white space instead of design elements (like bars, colors, glyphs, etc.). Some resumes that really didn't work for candidates involved a newspaper layout (creative, but ineffective for a non-newspaper application), an elaborate marketing slick type of layout with lots of color and graphical elements (drew attention away from the actual resume content, and didn't photocopy well), and a resume written in Comic Sans that looked like someone threw content into a blender, pureed it, and poured it out onto both sides of a sheet of paper. > Why care about content? I'm interested in seeing how your resume matches > my job. In other words, I expect you worked before, and I bet in a lot > of those jobs, you did nice things well that I don't really care about. > Look at the job description and, where possible, write your resume to > tell you about things you've done in the past that apply to your current > application. The more tailored a resume is to the job ad, the better off the candidate is. I can't say enough about custom resumes. They show that the candidate is paying attention and has put thought into why they want a job with your company. > If I get a DOC file, I take a look at style use as an indication of the > writer's thought process--I know, it's a resume, why waste time on > bothering with styles? Well, because it shows you care about them, and I > do, and seeing style use is a plus. I don't go that far. I print them out. I expect writers to abide by the style and processes their team/employer uses. The interview closes that gap with me, and if hired, they're expected to follow convention else be intelligent about changing processes by talking about it and not just going off and doing their own thing. The "I'm doing it my way, so there" approach gets immediate attention in the form of performance improvement plans. > Make sure you are consistent. Make sure you spell product names > correctly. Make sure there are no typos or spelling mistakes. And make sure your phone number and e-mail address are correct. Nothing like calling an applicant for a phone screening only to get a wrong number (consistently!). Yes, it's happened. -- Bill Swallow HATT List Owner WWP-Users List Owner Senior Member STC, TechValley Chapter STC Single-Sourcing SIG Manager http://techcommdood.blogspot.com avid homebrewer and proud beer snob "I see your OOO message and raise you a clue." ______________________________________________ Author Help files and create printed documentation with Doc-To-Help. New release adds Team Authoring Support, enhanced Web-based help technology and PDF output. Learn more at www.doctohelp.com/tcp. 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