Making Sure Your Resume Gets Through to Recruiters
The Internet has made recruiting more efficient in many ways. It
used to be that you'd have to send your resume to a company by
postal mail and wait for it to get routed to the right
individual. Now, with e-mail, you're often able to send your
resume directly to the decision maker. Overall this is a good
thing. The challenge though is that you have competition: it's
just as easy for other people to email the same hiring manager
or recruiter. Most recruiters use spam filters in an attempt to
keep offers for drugs, loans, etc. out of their inbox.
Unfortunately, many spam filters make mistakes and can classify
a legitimate resume you send to a recruiter as a spam message.
In addition, even if your resume is not marked as spam, you are
still probably competing for the recruiter's attention with
maybe a hundred or more other resumes the recruiter received
that day.
Avoiding the Spam Trap
There is no one single rule or maxim for keeping your resume
from being misclassified as a spam message. Different spam
filters work in different ways. However, there are some general
things you can look out for. It's generally better to copy and
paste your resume into the body of the message instead of
attaching a document file. First, many recruiters are busy and
won't take the time to open your document file when other
resumes in their inbox are pasted right into the message.
Secondly, some email filtering systems reject messages with
documents attached for fears the document could be infected with
a virus.
Although enthusiasm is generally better in a resume than using
boring words and phrases, some words can set off spam filters.
Words to avoid include: "free," "mortgage," and "trial." If you
use exclamation points in your resume, do so sparingly and don't
use more than one exclamation point in succession (e.g. writing
"Great!" would be safer than "Great!!"). Also, don't use
multiple colors in your emails to recruiters. It looks
unprofessional and some email filters see colors as an
indication of a spam message.
Some job seekers run their resumes through spam filters first
before emailing to a recruiter. If you have a spam filter
installed on your PC, this can be a simple step to take to
increase the likelihood your resume is getting delivered.
If your email software has a "Read Receipt" feature which can
alert you when a recipient has opened a message, you may be
tempted to use it when sending your resume to recruiters. While
it would be an effective way of knowing your message was
delivered, we would not recommend it on the grounds that the
recruiter could view it in a negative way. No one likes to be
spied on, and most email programs will cause a warning message
to show up if a read receipt will be generated.
Standing Out from the Crowd
Once you are reasonably sure your resume isn't getting dismissed
by spam filters, the next step is to get the recruiter to want
to open and read your resume. There are several things to keep
in mind when persuing this goal. First, make sure you are
sending your resume to someone it's relevant for. If the
recruiter specializes in accounting, don't send them an
engineering resume. Do a little research about the recruiter or
employer first and come up with a subject line that is targeted
to their situation. For example, if you were a programmer
sending your resume to a pharmaceuticals company, you could use
"C++ Programmer with Pharmaceutical Industry Experience" as your
subject (assuming that you really did have experience in the
industry). A subject like that will set you apart from the other
resumes waiting in the recruiter's inbox.
After the recruiter has opened your email, you want to make sure
they can quickly understand your capabilities by having an easy
to read and powerfully written resume. For a thorough discussion
of ways to improve your resume, read the section on resumes in
the Job Search Handbook (www.jobsearchhandbook.com).