Most recruiters these days get a
plenty of CVs from their professional ‘çontacts’ and otherwise. Thanks to some
boom in social networking space, getting details of a recruitment person is not
difficult- first name.last name@company name.com and bingo, you got the correct
email id too. Absolutely no rocket science.
I am not sure how many
unsolicited CVs a recruitment person gets in a day. Especially if one is into
IT service sector or an e-commerce company. And if you and the applicant have a
shared contact on any of the social media site, you cannot even call the CV
received as an unsolicited one- even though you have not spoken to your contact
in years. Just to give an idea, during my tenure in recruitment with an IT
service major, we used to get almost 20-30 thousand resumes in a quarter
through our career email id and that too when social media was way less active.
We all know that the ratios are
pathetic if we take unemployed population to the eligible for hiring population
and unemployed population and available openings. Hence as a recruitment
person, I looked for all possible reasons to reject- a slightest doubt, any
ambiguity, irrelevant or incomplete information and sometimes even presentation
of CV. Scientifically proven, an average Human’s attention span is less than 3
minutes. With modern technology like internet and multi-channel dish TVs, the
attention span of humans has reduced drastically as people quickly move to
another available option if they do not find one channel/ website appealing.
Gone are the days of only Doordarshan
where people had no choice but to look at that round thing revolving.
So let me tell you my favorite
reasons to reject CVs.
Ah that cut-copy-paste: I have seen many CVs where people have
copied project details from a colleague’s CV. Trust me I have even seen people
from different backgrounds in terms of caste and state having the date of birth
and father’s name same as each other (thanks to Indian caste system, it makes
job easier for recruiters by proving this plagiarism). Obviously, none made to
the interview round.
During world-war 2, a famous
German spy was caught with a fake British passport. The reason was most simple
and it was just one minor mistake which the Germans did despite copying it to a
near perfection. Germans of that era, used to write the numeric seven as 7
while the Britishers wrote it as 7. In a similar way, lot of people while
copying, miss out on matching the font and style of writing. You may notice two
paragraphs in different fonts and writing styles. Bang on!! Recruiters have one
reason to drop a CV as probability of being fake is high.
CV is not encyclopedia: I wonder sometimes what must have been the
thought process of a person with 5-8 years of relevant job experience when he
writes that he was the class cricket team captain or an event coordinator of a
college festival during his under-grads. Baffles me. Rather beats me! Some also
do not shy away from mentioning their graduation projects while they are
applying for a mid-management role. In the sea of irrelevant information, the
relevant ones get lost. As a professional, I would like to focus on your
professional quality for which I am going to hire you and personal qualities
which holds relevance for me in terms of organizational and team fitment.
Nothing beyond.
Senior level people also fall
into certain common mistakes which they shall avoid. A long encyclopedia CV and
lack of clarity on role they have been performing or they want to get into
often lead to rejection or holding of CV. Sometimes, their best work just gets
lost in a resume of almost 6-8 pages. It is almost like finding a needle in
hay-stack
What do you want to do?: I had the unique experience of knowing one
gentleman- of course through his CV. I knew him so well that after a point just
by seeing the sender’s name, I used to move the mail to the junk folder. The
person applied to all possible jobs we used to advertise in newspaper and send
application for all of them. Right from Java architect, dot net programmer to
program manager, he was everything. This omnipotent man surely caught the
attention of all recruiters but for wrong reasons. The CV shall speak in the
introductory paragraph, that who you are and where would you like to go.
Selective applications will yield more success than carpet bombing.
Hiding information- something fishy:
My award for best academic
qualification goes to BE from JNTU. It really helped me a lot in dropping off
the CVs. Nothing against any university but during late 2000s, lot of fake
colleges mushroomed and used to give fake degrees. Most of them used JNTU’s
name which otherwise is a prestigious university in Andhra. Hence to avoid the
trap of false information and fake degrees, recruiters between 2008 and 2010
started rejecting JNTU CVs unless college, marks and other relevant details
were mentioned. The tenth and twelfth marks actually helped in establishing the
credibility of one’s academic orientation.
Same way if an application shows
experience of ten years but employment details mentioned are only for 5-6 years
or a gap in education or employment is left unexplained, no recruitment person
will have the bandwidth to get the relevant information individually from all
the applied candidates at the initial level of screening.
I have talked a lot about how
recruiters drop CV. That doesn’t mean that recruiters are only to reject
people. Imagine an ‘ Indian Idol ’competition going on and poor three judges
have to go through auditions of thousands of people to have top first top
twenty five and then the winner. The audition round is more of elimination and
finding the champion from top twenty odd people is the selection. Recruitment
is no different. In elimination round, with attention span of judge being just
30-60 seconds, one needs to strike the right chord and right node within the
given time. There is no second chance. So what is the right chord and node for
your candidature?
- Be precise: A two-three sider CV will catch more attention than an eight pager.
- Provide information: Give details about your education, college and experience with relevant dates. For senior profiles, education scores may not matter much but for fresh out of college people, surely it is one of the selection criteria. Do not assume that by hiding, you can get away as all companies will have their policies around.
- Do not hide information: Breaks between two jobs are better admitted than left unaddressed.
- Do not twist information: In cases where you have worked in an organization for a month or two only, do not try to merge the experience to show stability in your career. If found later on in background verification process, be sure you will lose the job because of discrepancy.
- Provide relevant information: Provide information about your current job and responsibilities. As you progress in your career, your recent jobs shall have more weightage on your CV and previous ones shall shrink appropriately.
- Basic personal information is needed: Contact information, date of birth, passport status are always helpful.
- Do not copy: Even if your friend and you are working in same project, present differently. Your CV is reflection of your style of presenting the facts. Do not copy.
- Claim what you have done: A false claim can fall flat in interview and it will be worse than not having the tall claims.
In short, keep it simple and be
honest.
