English 420Y - Business Writing Online

The resumes I would call back would be 3, 5, 9, 10, and 29. I chose these based upon the initial feel I got as I looked through them. Any resumes that did not have concise formatting I immediately threw out, which brought the number down. Then I looked at GPA and work experience. I did this because I wanted to see which resumes showed the hard work it takes to keep a high GPA, as well as the relevance of the points brought up under each job.

I found it to be very hard to only spend about 30 seconds per resume since there is so much different information in a resume. I do understand now why the recruiting people can only spend that much time looking at each one. If you read every word for every resume that showed up on your desk you wouldn't have time to do any other work. This was a good activity because it gives you a good chance to see how other people are writing their resumes and how you can make yours better.

When I looked through all of those resumes I was getting so many ideas on ways to change my resumes. A lot of the ideas that I was coming up with was with the format or design. I also was looking at the objective statements for ways to revise mine. In the resumes I also found many good examples of ways to make previous work experiences correlate to future job positions. The five resumes that I thought were the best and I would hire the person were:

#4- I found it to be very clean and organized. It also had a very clear objective statement and good previous work experiences.

Well to begin, I think this is sort of odd because I don’t know the job position I am looking to hire. So I am going to base this off of a strong objective statement which clearly states their desire and has solid supporting information, or those which look to be very well round individuals.

13 – Seems to have good work experience related to animal care. It also appears she has done a lot at each of her jobs.

22 – Has relevant work experience and achieved a lot at each of her summer internships

This was definitely something new and I’m glad I got the opportunity to do an activity like this. Having gone through more than 30 resumes in less than 10 minutes, it gave me a better perspective of what employers endure when looking for a solid, qualified candidate. Now I can see why employers spend about 15 to 30 seconds on each resume, it is very time consuming.

Going through all these resumes at once was tough, at first I wasted a lot of time, but then in the middle I started skipping the ones that didn’t appear pleasant to the eye and also it was hard to find the information in the given time. After going through these resumes I am not amazed at the minor specifications that the employer looks for. It takes a lot of time and effort to go through those 300- 500 resumes that the companies get every year as applications for the available job.

The candidates that I chose to call for an interview were 9, 10. 13, 20, and 29. I basically looked at the objective they said they were applying for and looked at their relative experience related to that objective. Even if they had no experience but stated that they were looking for an internship in that field, I still gave them some consideration. The next thing I looked at was the education info and how their GPAs looked for the time period they had been in school.

Since I only had ten minutes to go over 34 resumes, I focused on the organization and objective of the resume. It wasn’t an easy job to go over in that short time. I could imagine employers going through numerous resumes by almost just flipping each page. I realized that it got to have something outstands than others to give strong impression. When I went over the resumes, I focused on first how well it was organized and I took more time to read ones that had a clear objective combing purpose and ability of the writer.

Looking at the resumes initially took me a lot of time. Now I can really understand how it feels to go through tons of them. I mean, to read through them carefully and to pick out the best one can be really painful. The first thing that I saw in the resume was the structure of the resume and the work experience. I mean if the resume looked too squished or difficult to read then I would skip the resume. I also saw the level of important and relevance of the material. If the above points seemed ok then I would go ahead and read the resume carefully.

This exercise was actually a lot of fun. I felt like I finally knew what employers go through. At my internship last summer my boss mentioned that they had received over 500 resumes for their internship program. I can only imagine how they sorted through all of those resumes.
I finally see the importance of organizing your resume well. As soon as I looked at the resume I saw how well it was organized and the use of action verbs. I almost scanned the beginning of each sentence and I felt like there was a really strong verb then I read the whole sentence.