Re: Other handshakes?
Frankly, I find it amazing that hiring managers
would be so quick to reject a resume without any
knowledge of how or why the formatting was applied
as it was.
True, some of the hirers sounded harsh. However, what they're doing isn't unique. Publishers have been doing much the same with unsolicited manuscripts for years. The only difference is, publishers use criteria such as correct spelling and punctuation, or whether standard manuscript conventions are followed.
I used to think this unfair. To some extent, I still do. However, the editor at one large paperback publishing house told me that applying such criteria is a useful filter for reducing the amount of work that editors have to do. The filter eliminates many manuscripts in a fraction of the time that considering them carefully would do. Admittedly, the filter might lead them to reject some saleable or prestigious manuscripts, but that rarely happens, and the editorial staff generally knows which well-known writers might submit sub-standard manuscripts.
I was skeptical of the idea - until I started applying it to the student papers I was marking as a university instructor. To my surprise, the presentation was a reliable guide to the quality of thought in student papers at least 85% of the time. Not, let me rush to say that I ever looked only at presentation, or at presentation first; I looked at the relation after I had graded the papers for everything.
Moreover, in talking to students with poor presentations, I frequently found that they had written the paper the night before it was due, or had had several other papers due the same day. Often, they admitted that they hadn't put much effort into it.
My conclusion: publishers knew what they were doing.
I strongly suspect that the hirers know what they are doing with their criterion, too.
It's true that some people can design good-looking pages or have good work habits without producing any useful content. Even more people fiddle with design without any real knowledge. However, my own experiences with hiring, as well as the samples of other writer's works that I've seen make me believe that, usually, somebody who will go the extra mile on design will also do so in content. Not always, by any means - but often enough that the criterion is not as outrageous as I once thought.
Anyway, even if the criterion is completely arbitrary, taking the "your loss" attitude isn't very advisable. There's many parts of the hiring process that I believe are arbitrary: the need to wear formal clothes, many of the routine questions, the over-emphasis on "the team," the insistence on having resumes submitted in MS Word, and the casual attitude that interviewers have towards a matter that is very important to me are only the more obvious ones. However, I go along with them because that's part of the game. When you're looking for work, you're marketing yourself, and part of marketing yourself is giving your audience what they want.
Moreover, the same people who impose all these expectations generally act quite differently once you're hired. Often, they're decent people, but not very good at hiring (few people, I believe, are, including most of those who do it for a living). As a result, they play a tightly scripted role. Going along with the role costs me very little expect momentary annoyance, while not following them would almost certainly make me unemployable. So, I humor them and try not to let my feelings show.
The same goes for submitting a resume that uses styles. Even if you don't believe that it's a useful filter, humoring it costs very little time or effort. So why not doo so? Those people who said they reformatted their resumes as a result of this discussion have the right idea. When you're looking for work, you should take advantage of whatever you can.
--
Bruce Byfield 604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com
"It is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill.
We might be otherwise, we might be all
We dream of happy, high, majestical."
- Percy Shelley, "Julian and Maddalo"
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