Why is a Resume Important?
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Your resume is only step in job hunting in which you have total control. It’s your personal marketing document. Based upon the strength of information in your resume, you will either be selected for an interview or passed over and deleted.
The Resume’s Function
The purpose of a resume is not to get a job, its purpose is to get you an job interview. And any jobseeker in today’s job market is up against very stiff competition.
Put yourself in the employers shoes. The post has just arrived and a stack of 100+ resumes have been dropped on your desk. Your first goal is narrowing down that stack to perhaps 10 or 20 applicants so you are going to have to be ruthless. At this stage your resume is going to have to stand out so not to get deleted!
Employers spend approximately 20 seconds looking at each resume, its a fact. In that 20 seconds, they make a quick decision. This decision is normally based on the overall appearance of your resume, the format, and the key selling points you have listed in your qualifications summary at the top of the resume.
If you make it to the next stage, your resume will receive a reading. But again, the employer is still looking for a reason to eliminate you as a applicant. From the initial resumes that came in the post, the goal for the employer might be to narrow the shortlist to only five candidates who will be called to attend a job interview. So even if you survived the first 20 second pre-screen and made it to the stack of 10, you still have a 50/50 chance of being cut from the final interview selection.
Remember, this entire process happens solely on the strength of your resume. If you survive this important process, your resume then becomes the basis for your job interview. The employer will then use your resume as an outline to discuss your career history, accomplishments and qualifications for the position.
After the interview, your resume continues to represent you, as your qualifications are compared against those of other applicants who have also made it through this interview stage aswell. Let’s imagine that only the 5 shortlisted candidates were interviewed. Now the employer has to make a choice. Therefore the people involved in the decision take the time to discuss the final 5 resumes of those interviewed…again. The only way they are going to choose one is to eliminate, here your resume plays another very important role in refreshing and reminding them of your relevent skills and the impression you made during the interview, etc.
You are going to need a good resume to get this far!
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