Re: Tooting my own horn...Resume Information

["Mike O." <obie1121 -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Nice article, Diane!


Mike MacLean wrote:
> if your resume doesn't catch her on the first page, 
> you're in the wrong pile.
This sounds like possibly a useful method for high-volume,
low-criticality hiring. Like when you are hiring 100 people to
staff your call center and you expect half of them to wash out
during training. But it doesn't seem like a very useful way to
hire a well-paid professional for an important project.

> If the first page is good, then she might look at the second. 
This seems only marginally better than calling at random!

> Unfortunately, there's just not the time to read each 
> resume through.
Perhaps the HR department could devote 10% of each of their
meetings to reading resumes? :-)

I hear this all the time, and my reaction is that I just can't
believe the fear and loathing so many people have when it comes
to the act of reading. I am always having to downgrade my
assumptions about how much stuff people are willing to read --
even if they requested it! - before their attention span wanders
off. This applies to all kinds of documents, not just resumes.

Ever wonder why you didn't get a response your emailed question?
I have personally seen managers sort a hundred or so unread
emails by sender, reading only those from their boss or above,
and deleting everybody below them without opening the message.
Oh well, I guess it wasn't important.
 
When you have a pile of resumes which are all laid out more or
less the same way, and you already know what you are looking
for, you should be able to scan through every paragraph at a
phenomenal rate of speed. 

HR folks are always going on about how much it costs to make a
wrong hiring decision. Yet they can't take an extra 30 minutes
or so to properly read a pile of resumes? 

I was lucky enough to be taught at an early age that reading is
a pleasure, not a chore. I am by no means a speed reader, but at
some point in my life I made an effort to learn some basic
speedreading techniques including skimming and scanning, and it
has paid off well.



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