Does the length of your resume matter?
There are a lot of questions in the resume writing industry, human resource department, and the job search realm concerning the question, “how long should my resume be? You cannot develop a one-size fit all resume. For positions within the Government, your resume has to be as detailed as possible. The United States Government wants to read your resume to hire. Once your resume is reviewed and your selected, the idea is that you are hirable; the Government interview is a chance for the team to get to know you and discover how you will use your skills in the work setting. For civilian white-collar positions you want to develop a highlight of your work experience. Your resume is intended to get you to the interview so HR representatives can make a later decision on hiring you (3-4 page max. resume). For blue-collar positions, recruiters want to see your manual labor skills displayed in your resume and they read your work experience with intent to hire based on your level of manual skill (1 page for every 10 years of experience).
In this day in time, the majority of organizations utilize an Applicant Tracking System (ATS software), which is not affected by lengthy resumes. The way ATS works is it identifies keywords within your resume that match the job announcement. Therefore, key word optimization is important. The keyword criteria can be taken from the job description found in the job announcement. Also, the ATS system is built to read text, so pretty or unimportant formatting may cause the system to throw your resume out, and it will never reach a real human being for review. The ATS system was created to help HR departments by weaving through hundreds of resumes per day. Traditionally, recruiters and HR personnel had to read each resume, resulting in frustration, which led to HR representatives discarding lengthy resumes. Consequently, qualified personnel would never get noticed. Have your resume ATS ready!
Ready To Go Resumes LLC
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