If an employer blinks, he might miss your resume
➔ We recently heard a veteran recruiter pose this question to a roomful of job seekers, “Is your resume 10-second ready?”
What he meant was this: Given the fact that he might see 50-100 resumes each and every day, he doesn’t have time to fully review and absorb all of them. As such, he will devote about 10 seconds to each one to determine whether or not to keep that resume or simply move on to the next one.
Are you ready?
So, the question: is your resume 10-second ready? In just 10 seconds (or less), can your resume sufficiently entice a recruiter to decide to keep it or just move on? Hiring managers most likely are faced with the same dilemma.
In other words, on first pass, you’ve got 10 seconds to make a favorable impression. If that doesn’t sound like much, you’re right.
The job market remains highly competitive, highly selective. With the average number (according to a variety of sources) of applicants per opening at more than 100, you don’t have much time to make your case.
In today’s high-tech, digital environment, the same can be said for your LinkedIn profile. Can a recruiter scan your profile and make a positive decision on you in 10 seconds or less?
Which brings us to another salient point. Your resume and your LinkedIn profile must mirror one another. If you’re fortunate enough to spark someone’s interest, a recruiter or hiring manager will look at both – and both sources need to be singing the same song.
We admit that there are occasions where you might want (or have) to tweak your resume to suite a particular position, but the differences must be pertinent to that job. The overriding rule is that your resume and LinkedIn profile must be consistent. Which is to say that they don’t have to be identical, but they have to match.
Just like the rest of the world – and especially the work-a-day world – everything is more time sensitive and more compressed. Your resume – and LinkedIn profile – have to reflect that… and you’ve got 10 seconds to do it.