Gary Palma, SHRM-SCP
In an unscientific survey of well over 100 job postings in late 2022 and early 2023, I don’t recall any that did not require the applicant to submit a resume or their LinkedIn profile, or both.
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I recommend continuing to submit your resume for the simple reason that you can and should adapt it to individual job postings so that you maximize matching your unique qualifications to the requirements of each job. Resumes targeted at specific roles as marketing tools are more likely to succeed in landing you an interview. Most LinkedIn profiles are rather static and not updated as frequently. Your resume is much more adaptable to those instances in which your standard version does not exactly match certain desired opportunities.
Augmenting Your Resume
By all means, take full advantage of the option to submit a cover letter and relevant portfolio materials. A popular resume trend is to include links to a website, LinkedIn profile and other professional social media accounts. Post a powerful online portfolio to display your accomplishments to preferred employers and networkers.
Supplementing your pitch with a video resume is another big 2023 resume trend that will enable you to showcase your assets in a vibrant way. Viewers will witness direct evidence of your personality, as well as your communication, marketing and presentation skills.
Applicant Tracking Systems
If by now you are persuaded to update and utilize your resume, a key best practice for resumes in 2023 is to optimize compatibility with increasingly pervasive Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) that are now used by nearly all major companies and recruiters and are projected for continued growth throughout this decade.
ATS platforms provide a varying combination of services to employers and recruiters, including:
- Sourcing and evaluating candidates
- Supporting talent acquisition processes
- Integration with other company systems
- Building a database of candidates
- Analyzing Key Performance Indicators of selected recruiting metrics and creating reports
Optimize Your Resume for ATS!
Understanding ATS capabilities and crafting a well-written resume that accommodates the system’s algorithms will help you land the sought-after job interview. Now more than ever, employ the best practice of judiciously customizing your resume and keywords to the job description each time you apply. Using the following is also recommended:
- A chronological or hybrid resume format instead of the functional format
- A traditional resume font such as Helvetica, Garamond, Tahoma, Georgia, Calibri, Verdana or Cambria
- A professional file name with your first and last name in an easy-to-scan format such as a .docx
- Lead off with an impactful career summary of the skills and accomplishments that you offer expressed in action words, instead of an outdated objective statement.
- Standard resume headings such as Career Summary, Major Accomplishments, Skills, Work Experience, Education and Certifications
- Avoid using acronyms, tables, columns, headers, and footers so that your information does not get lost or cause parsing errors.
Something For You – Candidate Experience Benefits
As the candidate navigates through their application experience, the ATS may deliver one or more of the following supports:
- Helping to remove bias in job descriptions
- Candidate-friendly “single click” applications
- Digital assistants answer candidate questions and provide guided experiences.
- Candidates self-schedule interviews and calendars.
- Candidates can track the status of applications.
- Candidates receive SMS messages from employers and recruiters.
Triumph!
As you successfully land your targeted job, you will continue to interface with the ATS when the hiring manager is enabled to create a digital job offer and launch new employee onboarding with personalized preboarding and onboarding tools and customizable new hire packets. Your (no doubt stellar!) job performance data will be fed back into the ATS to confirm that it operated superbly by sourcing, evaluating and selecting YOU!
