TAILORING THE CHRONOLOGICAL RESUME Let's assume you have been reading my series of blogs and you have written the perfect chronological resume (we are going to move to other resume types shortly). Now you have to modify it. Why would you modify the perfect resume? Because, it will never get you the interview if the resume does not fit the job description for the job you are interested in getting.
I do many job posting every year on boards such as CareerBuilder, MoldingJobs, TopEchelon, my web site www.discoverypersonnel.com, and up to 400 niche boards and I never cease to be amazed by the responses I get back. My postings are usually very job specific since I recruit for the plastics industry but most of the resumes I receive have little correlation to the job posting. I believe much of that is due to desperation on the part of the job seeker and sometimes pure arrogance, the job seeker believes they are so great they can perform any duty in spite of no formal training or experience. What I find more disturbing is that sometimes when I respond to a resume (I try to respond to all resumes) by saying the candidate lacks the qualifications for the position, I get an indignant email response saying that they have 5 years of injection molding experience. I suppose they expected me to know that but if I had that kind of psychic ability I would be winning the lottery and not recruiting. This leads me to believe that in this era of word processing software, many job hunter are lazy or woefully under informed.
"If you have a particular responsibility or experience the posting calls for and it is not reflected in your resume, put it in. You have to remember; human
resources & hiring authorities are looking between 15-50 resumes a day for a particular position. You will have a leg up on the competition by simply
tailoring your resume toward what the job description cries our for. If you are having a difficult time reflecting in you resume what the company wants,
it may not be the right position for you at this time." - By: Gary Nickol in Resume Tips from an Executive Recruiter at JSN CareerTips
In the old days when I prepared my resume with a typewriter, I used to attach a cover letter to point out my areas of expertise that matched the criteria the company wanted to see and that kept me from typing, and typing and typing. With the invention of word processing software it does not take any more effort to write a resume for each individual job posting than it does to write a cover letter. A cover letter may still be worth sending but very often the cover letters are ignored (because most of them are terrible) and the hiring or human resources authority goes straight to the resume. If you need to write a three page resume to get all of you relevant job experience into the resume, do it. You should be able to have at least 5 bullet points explaining why your past experience matches the job requirements. If you cannot do it, what are you going to do when you get the job?
8:54:38 PM 
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