As a professor and a corporate
recruiting strategist, I can tell you that very few applicants truly understand
the corporate recruiting process. Most people looking for a job approach it
with little factual knowledge. That is a huge mistake. A superior approach is to
instead analyze it carefully, because data can help you understand why so many
applicants simply can’t land a job. If you can bear with me for a few quick
minutes, I can show you using numbers where the job-search “roadblocks” are and
how that data-supported insight can help you easily double your chances of
landing an interview and a job.
Your Resume Will Face a Lot of Competition
Although it varies with the company
and the job, on average 250 resumes are received for each
corporate job opening. Finding a position opening late can’t help your chances
because the first resume is received within 200 seconds after
a position is posted. If you post your resume online on a major job site like
Monster so that a recruiter can find it, you are facing stiff competition
because 427,000 other resumes are posted on Monster alone each
and every week (BeHiring).
Understanding the Hiring “Funnel” can Help You Gauge Your Chances
In recruiting, we have what is
known as a “hiring funnel” or yield model for every job which helps recruiting
leaders understand how many total applications they need to generate in order
to get a single hire. As an applicant, this funnel reveals your chances of
success at each step of the hiring process. For the specific case of an online
job posting, on average, 1,000 individuals will see a job
post, 200 will begin the application process, 100 will
complete the application, 75 of those 100 resumes will be
screened out by either the ATS or a recruiter, 25 resumes will
be seen by the hiring manager, 4 to 6 will be invited for an
interview, 1 to 3 of them will be invited back for final
interview, 1 will be offered that job and 80 percent
of those receiving an offer will accept it (Talent Function Group LLC).
Six Seconds of Resume Review Means Recruiters Will See Very Little
When you ask individual recruiters
directly, they report that they spend up to
5 minutes
reviewing each individual resume. However,
a
recent research study from TheLadders that included the direct observation
of the actions of corporate recruiters demonstrated that the boast of this
extended review time is a huge exaggeration. You may be shocked to know that
the average recruiter spends a mere
6 seconds reviewing a
resume.
A similar study found the review
time to be 5 - 7 seconds (BeHiring).
Obviously six seconds only allows a
recruiter to quickly scan (but not to read) a resume. We also know from
observation that nearly 4 seconds of that 6-second scan is
spent looking exclusively at four job areas, which are: 1) job titles, 2)
companies you worked at, 3) start/end dates and 4) education. Like it or not,
that narrow focus means that unless you make these four areas extremely easy
for them to find within approximately four seconds, the odds are high that you
will be instantly passed over. And finally be aware that whatever else that you
have on your resume, the recruiter will have only the remaining approximately 2
seconds to find and be impressed with it. And finally, if you think
the information in your cover letter will provide added support for your
qualifications, you might be interested to know that a mere 17 percent
of recruiters bother to read cover letters (BeHiring).
A Single Resume Error Can Instantly Disqualify You
A single resume error may prevent
your resume from moving on. That is because 61 percent of
recruiters will automatically dismiss a resume because it contains typos
(Careerbuilder). In a similar light, 43 percent of hiring
managers will disqualify a candidate from consideration because of spelling
errors (Adecco). The use of an unprofessional email address will get a resume
rejected 76 percent of the time (BeHiring). You should also be
aware that prominently displaying dates that show that you are not currently
employed may also get you prematurely rejected at many firms.
A Format That Is Not Scannable Can Cut Your Odds by 60 Percent
TheLadders’ research also showed
that the format of the resume matters a great deal. Having a clear or
professionally organized resume format that presents relevant information where
recruiters expect it will improve the rating of a resume by recruiter by a
whopping 60 percent, without any change to the content (a 6.2
versus a 3.9 usability rating for the less-professionally organized resume).
And if you make that common mistake of putting your resume in a PDF format, you
should realize that many ATS systems will simply not be able to scan and read
any part of its content (meaning instant rejection).
Weak LinkedIn Profiles Can Also Hurt You
Because many recruiters and hiring
managers use LinkedIn profiles either to verify or to supplement resume
information, those profiles also impact your chances. Ey- tracking technology
used by TheLadders revealed that recruiters spend an average of 19
percent of their time on your LinkedIn profile simply viewing your
picture (so a professional picture may be worthwhile). The research also
revealed that just like resumes, weak organization, and scannability within a
LinkedIn profile negatively impacted the recruiter’s ability to “process the
profile” (TheLadders).
50 Seconds Spent Means Many Apply for a Job They Are Not Qualified
for
Recruiters report that over 50
percent of applicants for a typical job fail to meet the basic
qualifications for that job (Wall Street Journal). Part of the reason
for that high “not-qualified” rate is because when an individual is looking at
a job opening, even though they report that they spend 10 minutes reviewing
in detail each job which they thought was a “fit” for them, we now know that
they spend an average of just 76 seconds (and as little as 50
seconds) reading and assessing a position description that they apply
for (TheLadders). Most of that roughly 60-second job selection time reviewing
the position description is actually spent reviewing the narrow introductory
section of the description that only covers the job title, compensation, and
location.
As a result of not actually
spending the necessary time reviewing and side-by-side comparing the
requirements to their own qualifications, job applicants end up applying for
many jobs where they have no chance of being selected.
Be Aware That Even if Your Resume Fits the Job Posting, You May
Still Be Rejected
To make matters worse, many of the
corporate position descriptions that applicants are reading are poorly written
or out of date when they are posted. So even if an applicant did spend the
required time to fully read the job posting, they may still end up applying for
a job that exists only on paper. So even though an applicant actually meets the
written qualifications, they may be later rejected (without their knowledge)
because after they applied, the hiring manager finally decided that they
actually wanted a significantly different set of qualifications.
Making it Through a Keyword Search Requires a Customized Resume
The first preliminary resume
screening step at most corporations is a computerized ATS system that scans
submitted resumes for keywords that indicate that an applicant fits a
particular job. I estimate more that 90 percent of candidates apply using their
standard resume (without any customization). Unfortunately, this practice
dramatically increases the odds that a resume will be instantly rejected because
a resume that is not customized to the job will seldom include enough of the
required “keywords” to qualify for the next step, a review by a human.
Even if you are lucky enough to
have a live recruiter review your resume, because recruiters spend on average
less than 2 seconds (of the total six-second review) looking
for a keyword match, unless the words are strategically placed so that they can
be easily spotted, a recruiter will also likely reject it for not meeting the
keyword target.
No One Reads Resumes Housed in the Black hole Database
If you make the mistake of applying
for a job that is not currently open, you are probably guaranteeing failure.
This is because during most times, but especially during times of lean
recruiting budgets, overburdened recruiters and hiring managers simply don’t
have the time to visit the corporate resume database (for that reason, many
call it the black hole). So realize that recruiters generally only have time to
look at applicants who apply for a specific open job and who are then ranked
highly by the ATS system.
Some Applicants Have Additional Disadvantages
Because four out of the five
job-related factors that recruiters initially look for in a resume involve work
experience, recent grads are at a decided disadvantage when applying for most
jobs. Their lack of experience will also mean that their resume will likely
rank low on the keyword count. To make matters worse, the average hiring
manager begins with a negative view of college grads because a full 66
percent of hiring managers report that they view new college grads “as
unprepared for the work place” (Adecco).
Race can also play a role in your
success rate because research has shown that if you submit a resume with a
“white sounding name,” you have a 50 percent higher chance of
getting called for an initial interview than if you submit a resume with
comparable credentials from an individual with a “black-sounding name” (M.
Bertrand, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business).
Remember a Resume Only Gets You an Interview
Even with a perfect resume and a
little luck, getting through the initial resume screen by the recruiter only
guarantees that your resume will qualify for a more thorough review during what
I call the “knockout round.” During this next stage of review, the recruiter
will have more time to assess your resume for your accomplishments, your
quantified results, your skills, and the tools you can use.
Unfortunately, the recruiter is
usually looking for reasons to reject you, in order to avoid the criticism that
will invariably come from the hiring manager if they find knockout factors in
your resume. If no obvious knockout factors are found you can expect a
telephone interview, and if you pass that, numerous in-person interviews (note:
applicants can find the most common interview questions for a particular firm
on glassdoor.com).
Even if You Do Everything Right, the Odds Can Be Less Than 1
Percent
Because of the many roadblocks,
bottlenecks, and “knockout factors” that I have highlighted in this article,
the overall odds of getting a job at a “best-place-to-work” firm can often be
measured in single digits. For example, Deloitte, a top firm in the accounting
field, actually brags that it only hires 3.5 percent of its
applicants. Google, the firm with a No. 1 employer brand, gets well over 1
million applicants per year, which means that even during its robust hiring
periods when it hires 4,000 people a year, your odds of getting hired are an
amazingly low 4/10 of 1 percent. Those unfortunately are
painfully low “lotto type odds.”
Up to 50 Percent of Recruiting Efforts Result in Failure
In case you’re curious, even with
all the time, resources, and dollars invested in corporate recruiting
processes, still between 30 percent and 50 percent of
all recruiting efforts are classified by corporations as a failure. Failure is
defined as when an offer was rejected or when the new hire quit or had to be
terminated within the first year (staffing.org). Applicants should also note
that 50 percent of all new hires later regret their decision to accept the job
(Recruiting Roundtable).
Final Thoughts
Unfortunately, much of what is
written about “the perfect resume” and the ideal job search approach is based
on “old wives’ tales” and is simply wrong. However, when I review the numbers
that are available to me from internal company recruiting data and publicly
through research done by industry-leading firms like TheLadders, Adecco,
BeHiring, staffing.org, and Careerbuilder, it doesn’t take long to realize that
the real job search process differs significantly from the ideal one.
Rather than leaving things to
chance, my advice both to the applicant and to the corporate recruiting leader
is to approach the job search process in a much more scientific way. For the applicant
that means start by thoroughly reading the position description and making a
list of the required keywords that both the ATS and the recruiter will need to
see.
Next submit a customized resume
that is in a scannable format that ensures that the key factors that recruiters
need to see initially (job titles, company names, education, dates, keywords,
etc.) are both powerful and easy to find during a quick six-second scan. But
next comes the most important step: to literally “pretest” both your resume and
your LinkedIn profile several times with a recruiter or HR professional.
Pretesting makes sure that anyone who scans them for six seconds will be able
to actually find each of the key points that recruiters need to find.
My final bit of advice is something
that only insiders know. And that is to become an employee referral (the
highest volume way to get hired). Because one of the firm’s own employees
recommended you and also because the recruiter knows that they will likely have
to provide feedback to that employee when they later inquire as to “why their
referral was rejected,” résumés from referrals are reviewed much more closely.
I hope that by presenting these 35+
powerful recruiting-related numbers I have improved your understanding of the
recruiting process and the roadblocks that you need to steer around in order to
dramatically improve your odds of getting a great job.
http://www.ere.net/2013/05/20/why-you-cant-get-a-job-recruiting-explained-by-the-numbers/
