Why you should kill your own resume (and how)

What this week covers:

1. Why you need to understand why you AREN’T a fit

2. How recruiters vet for candidate fit and risk

3. Hiring Team questions to understand your resume risks

You know why you’re a fit, but do you know why you’re not?

This question is less rhetorical than it seems. Knowing why your resume is a fit for your jobs of interest is only half the battle. The more impactful thing to understand is, what hurts a resume’s chances of getting interviews. Understanding this allows you to position your resume effectively. Without understanding this, it is MUCH more difficult to identify the root cause of converting applications to interviews.

So no, this week’s newsletter isn’t focused around the “BuIlD yOuR BrAnD ReSuMeS aRe DeAd” sales pitches, but the actual approach you can (and should take) to asses your resume’s chances of being successful.

Understanding both why you are a fit, and why you might not be, is where the magic happens.

Taking this lens is critical because while recruiters ARE looking for resumes to be a job fit, they’re simultaneously assessing resume risks. Unchecked resume risks kill your resumes odds for success.

At best? A recruiter calls you to clarify some things.

At worst? (and more common) The recruiter moves on to the next candidate within 7 seconds.

With Recruiters/TA teams being understaffed and applicant volume being at highs, the odds of those clarifying questions coming is significantly less than it was in 2021.

Let me provide some behind the scenes context first. Any hire IS a risky decision for the company. They can only get so much data throughout interviews, and given that humans are humans, the unexpected can happen. Not only is hiring inherently risky, the wrong hire can be costly. From both a monetary and team engagement standpoint. This incentivizes hiring teams to make the least risky hire possible.

Why do you thinking companies LOVE hiring internally when they can? Here’s a secret, it’s not purely for employee engagement. The company has significant data on that candidate. Performance reviews, past results, how they work with the team, current manager POV, compensation info, etc. get taken into account for the company to make a more informed/less risky decision.

Minimizing risk matters, specifically in a market like this where the number of resumes you are competing against is higher than ever. Hiring teams prefer their candidates skills to come with a side of low risk. So let’s talk about how this plays out in real time, how to de-risk your position, and why it is important.

How Recruiters Kill Resumes

When I started my recruiting career right out of school, I was blessed to cut my teeth in the meat grinder that is agency recruiting. Agency recruiting is reviewing a lot of resumes and candidates across 60+ hours a week, because you get paid by your placements. In my world, not only did we get paid on the placements, but over the duration the person worked the contract position for too.

So this meant that not only did we have an incentive to fill the role, but an incentive for the person to work the contract over the defined timeline. We did NOT want them to start a job only for the match to be ‘not a fit’ a few months in. And the only way to do this is to assess every potential risk possible.

Which is contrary to what I initially thought recruiting was. I had 0 recruiting experience when I started. I thought we just needed to find candidates who were a fit. So when I got out of training and into recruiting I got smacked in the face by how recruiting actually works.

I was working on my first position on my first day on the phones. I quickly found 10 resumes that seemed like a fit on paper. The resumes had the right skills on paper. They had “customer service skills, SAP, and Microsoft Office experience” highlighted on their resume. “If this is all it takes i’m going to be a millionaire in no time” I thought to myself. I called 10 and got 7 on the phone. My calls where confirming fit instead of mitigating risk and looked like this.

me calling and “vetting” candidates for the first time"

Me: “I noticed you had customer service and SAP skills. Is that the type of job you’re interested in?”

Candidate: “Yes”

Me: “Great, I’m going to get you in front of the hiring manager, i’ll be reaching out soon with next steps.”

conversation ends

“Boy am I good at this”, I thought to myself as I trotted into my boss’s office with the candidates I had ready to send over to the client.

Until my boss eviscerated every candidate’s resume. They started rapid fire questioning me about everything that could be a potential risk. AKA killing the resumes.

• Why is this person going to move from a full time role to a contract?

• Why is this person looking to shift industries?

• What customer service skills did they actually have in detail? Was it handling call center complaints or account management?

• Their past titles look different from this job, what experience translates?

• Why is this person willing to take a perceived step back given this role and their current position?

• Why does this person have short stints of tenure across the past 3 years?

• Why hasn’t this person been working over the past 6 months?

All the above were some of the questions my boss hit me with in less than 3 minutes. And since I was a newbie recruiter, recruiting to confirm their fit, I didn’t mitigate any of the potential risk factors on the phone with them.

And while none of these flags are deal breakers in isolation, not having the answers to these questions DOES kill the chances of a candidate making it to the next stages in the eye’s of a hiring manager.

So with my tail tucked between my legs, I went back to the phone and had to recall the candidates after saying I was planning to send them to the client to get more info.

And in all honesty, it sucked. It was akward, and I hated it, but it was needed. Because these are the questions hiring managers ask as soon as resumes get in front of them.

Every time.

Overtime, my recruiting processed evolved with experience. Any decent recruiter is vetting to confirm risk and clarify any potential risks. Both are a critical component of the review process.

Even if the recruiter doesn’t vet risk, the hiring manager will.

But as the amount of candidate pool competition increases, the more critical de-risking your resume for your audience is. Because when there are more applications for 1 opening, the greater the chances of low risk resumes being in those applications.

And the odds of you getting the recruiter on the phone for them to clarify is lower than ever.

Which means you need to kill your own resume to combat it.

How to kill your own resume

Let’s talk about how you can audit your own resume to reduce risk

Adding a little corporate speak here (sorry). The more technical term for “Killing your own resume” is conducting a ‘pre-mortem’.

In short, a pre-mortem is imagining something failed and working backwards to determine what led to the failure. In this case, imagining that your application will not get a response and assessing why it didn’t.

The key from the above that a pre-mortem is, that it’s used to reduce the chances of failure due to biases and overconfidence by understanding the threats you are facing and the likelihood/magnitude that could kill your chances. By understanding those threats you face, you can take preventative actions to stop them.

Doing this for yourself is critical. When working with folks on their resumes I always hear “I’m not sure why my resume isn’t getting responses” which is fair. We all have biases, as any human does. But those get even sticker when it comes to one’s assessments of themselves. And that bias can skew how you are ACTUALLY positioning your resume. But the pre-mortem fixes for this.

Yes you know why you are a fit, but do you know why you aren’t?

Here are 3 questions to ask yourself to start your own pre-mortem audit.

1. Do I have experience with all the requirements of the job?

2. Do I have all the job requirements explicitly highlighted in my experience?

3. Do I have all of the requirements explicitly highlighted in my resume in a way the recruiter will understand?

Those are the easiest ones. If you answered ‘Yes’ to all 3 of those questions you should be a decent fit on paper. And if you have those 3 items taken care of and are struggling with responses, I’d bet there are some risk factors that need to be combated.

Below are a list of potential risk factors that you should cross reference against your resume.

These are directional buckets you can use, but have all been questions and feedback from hiring managers throughout my career.

1. Do you have choppy tenure that could make you a perceived flight risk?

2. Have you worked in more senior roles where this job could be a step back and you get bored?

3. Are you shifting from freelance/self employed into full time employment? Why?

4. Is this job in a brand new industry that would create a steep learning curve given your background?

5. Are there skill gaps from specific systems, technologies, methods, etc. that this person will need to know?

6. Does your resume framing focus more on responsibilities instead of qualifying the actual impacts you can make?

7. Do you have 90% of the required experiences but given the talent pool there is a high chance that other applicants meet 100%?

8. Are you used to working in environments that are resource heavy and applying for roles that will be start up, role up your sleeves and get work done environments?

9. Have you been focused on contract work in the past and applying for full time roles without clarifying why you want full time now?

10. Have you been laid off and are you leaving interpretation open to potentially assume it is performance related?

11. Can someone without your experience actually understand why you are a fit on paper without possessing the knowledge you have?

12. Has this person worked for small businesses but interested in a large, global organization? How big of the learning curve will operating in the new environment be?

Here’s the thing everyone thinks they are a fit for the role. And they very well can be. But few understand why they might NOT be a fit for the role, and position themselves to combat those risks.

While this can be uncomfortable, it is also invaluable. Because by conducting this type of assessment not only do you understand what threats you face, it becomes your cheatsheet.

Because if you understand what could make your resume risky and why, you can understand where you TRULY are the best fit, and can pivot your application strategy accordingly.

You can understand what companies/positions may come with too big of risks to mitigate, AND companies/jobs where your resume has little-to-no risk at all.

(Disclaimer: there will ALWAYS be some perceived risk, but you get what I mean.)

So this is how I would conduct the Killing Your Resume Process

1. Understand your skills, experiences and goals

2. Get that on paper on your resume

3. Ask yourself above questions or similar to audit for risk

4. Take steps to pro-actively reduce risks on your resume

5. Identify company types where you are the LOWEST risk, and prioritize those targets.

It’s a lot easier to de-risk when you get the chance to talk to someone. Converting applications to interviews is key in getting that chance.

The magic happens in the job search when you can sell yourself AND de-risk your candidacy. Focus on both.