English 420Y - Business Writing Online

The resumes that I chose were 5, 18, 22, 26, and 33. While scanning through these resumes I looked at a number of things. I mostly scanned the headings for information, the format, job location, the type of job experience, and if the jobs related to each other and the objective. I immediately dismissed any resume that stretched the margins almost to the edge of the page or was cluttered with too much information. I found these to be overwhelming and I didn’t want to waste my time reading everything on the page, and it was difficult to find the important information.

I really did not think that specific resumes would stand out after browsing a lot of them. There were a lot that stood out, but I actually saw a couple of resumes I would not consider reading at first sight since their structure was not attractive. The ones I chose were 9, 20, 23, 26 and 32. All of these resumes look very rich in content since at first sight you could see that they had a lot of specific details. These resumes had good use of italics and bold letters which showed professionalism and dedication. All these resumes fit the page perfectly, which made them stand out among the rest.

I felt the resume exercise gave a good perspective on what employers go through. It was difficult to get an idea of who the person is and the experience they have in 30 seconds. However, I now fully realize why it is important to make a resume appealing to the eye and well organized. If there was to much information, no bullet points, or no objective I didn't even bother reading it. When I was reading the resumes I was looking for a clear objective, educational background, related experience and also references. I was surprised to see that very few people listed references.

Looking through these resumes, the five candidates I would choose would be the applicants who wrote resumes # 1, 5, 22, 23, and 25. The first thing I noticed while looking through all of these was structure. It is very important that I was able to follow the text and not have to search real hard to try to find information. A little trick I learned is that the eye naturally follows the page from the upper left corner to the bottom right, and then from the bottom left to upper right in an "X" shape, so it is much easier to follow when subordinent lines are demoted.

I enjoyed looking through all the resumes, and I found five resumes that stood out amongst the others. I picked resumes 8, 9, 29, 31, and 32. I think what stood out the most of the five were the objective statements. All of the objective statements made it clear what the applicant wanted and how their work experience and education applies to their desired position. The resumes were also very organized and in a clear, clean format. All of the information about the work experiences were very detailed and informative. The tasks also correlated back to the objective statement.

The 5 candidates I chose to call for an interview are 5, 8, 13, 23, 32. Scanning all resumes within 10 minutes, first of all, I looked at how well a resume has been organized. If a resume hase been written in small font size and too lenghty or has abused bold and highlights improperly, I skipped it. In another hand, if a resume was very easy to read and well-organized with proper blank spaces, I felt like to read it more in depth.

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