Finally, the Secrets to Making the

Perfect Resume are YOURS!

I was shocked. 

It wasn’t long into my career as a recruiter that I discovered that the main reason that job-seekers weren’t getting the call, the interview, and the job wasn’t their skills or background.

It was their resume.

Because it ALL starts there.

Time and again I would post a job and receive fifty or more resumes…sometimes over a hundred. And time and again it took only 5 seconds for me to decide that they were not going to be interviewed. Not necessarily because they didn’t have some good, relevant experience, not because they weren’t likely bright and professional just like you..but because their resume just wasn’t good enough.

Look at it this way.  Recruiters are very busy. After they’ve posted a position on their website or job board, their BIGGEST priority is to as QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE go through the resumes they get and short-list the best applicants to contact for an interview. Remember, the ONLY way they can judge you is by your RESUME.  A fantastic resume is a clear reflection of your ability to impress their client (company or hiring manager).  Impressing their client is vital to them!  Even if your experience is good, a poor resume will tell them you are not the level of quality their client is looking for.

The REAL Truth about Resumes

Over the years my experience in recruiting let me to understand the sad but true reality about resumes:

About ONE THIRD of the resumes I receive were BAD. Sometimes it was awful spelling or grammar, other times it was disastrous formatting or clear inconsistencies, but often it was a real lack of fundamentals and understanding of what I was looking for that made me delete them.

This is harsh, I know, but it’s true. I’m here to tell you how it REALLY is for recruiters.  A recruiter is just too swamped to deal with a resume that doesn’t last that first 5 second test screening.  It can be easy to turn a recruiter off.  Into the recycle bin you go.

The second ONE THIRD of resumes received were what could be considered OKAY. No glaring mistakes, but clearly the candidate didn’t understand proper resume formatting, use of space, organization, powerful wording, or the responsibilities of the job I’d posted.  They obviously weren’t trying very hard to help me help them.

I never met ANY of these TWO THIRDS…EVER.  Maybe some of them would have been perfect for the positions I was looking to have filled…but their resume was the FIRST and ONLY way of convincing me they were good for the role…and they failed.

Most of the FINAL ONE THIRD were either Good or Very Good in quality. Sometimes I met these people. Sometimes.  But that depended on the final 5% of resumes….the EXCELLENT resumes.

These are always a JOY for a recruiter to read. They are powerful, attractive, easy to read, and make our job easier. Not only do recruiters feel a bond with these people, we’re secretly ON THEIR SIDE, because they clearly GET IT. I ALWAYS started with the EXCELLENT resumes.  And if I had enough of these to make my shortlist (usually about 6-8 people) then I didn’t call ANY of the others. I didn’t need to.

That’s right. Even the Very Good resumes were skipped if I had enough Excellent ones.  I would file them away for possible consideration for some future position...maybe. But as for this job? They were out.

I wasn’t alone…I talked to my recruiter colleagues, all who regularly screened thousands of resumes and everyone agreed.  Every single recruiter has the same ongoing frustration: we find that the overwhelming majority of people FOR WHATEVER REASON give us sub-standard resumes. 

I wondered WHY?  If the quality of their resume is TRULY the difference between getting the interview (and then the job) or being ignored, then why don’t more people make their resumes EXCELLENT??

It helped me realize that the VAST majority of people just don’t know what it takes to hit this top 5%...to have an excellent resume that leads to success.

Some of you may be thinking that YOUR resume is probably in this top category already…or at LEAST very good.  Think again. In order to test my theory, I started asking my applicants what level they thought their resume was at…and over 90% of them thought it was BETTER than it really was. People are fooling themselves!

Where was the disconnect?? 

I researched both sides and was surprised to find out that most job-seekers were using resume templates, older resume books, unproven so-called ‘professionals’, or refurbished versions of their own cv in order to create their resume.  Wow…I’d never seen such inconsistent, obsolete, bland, and truly cut-rate information on making a successful resume!  Website after website showed me examples of resumes that rated anywhere from garbage to good..but NO excellent ones.  Clearly, one reason job-seekers were making weak resumes because they had little way of knowing what we recruiters really wanted…

I determined that there were main 3 reasons why the average job-seeker’s resume wasn’t what we recruiters wanted to see:

• They didn’t know how important a resume was and so didn’t put in the time and effort
• They mistakenly believed that their experience alone was enough to get the interview/job
• They followed poor advice from poor sources and so created a mediocre resume

But what about the recruiter side…were WE to blame as well?

Another shock….I discovered over time that each individual recruiter had their OWN opinion about what made the perfect resume.  No WONDER people are so confused about what to add to and remove from their resume…success seemed to be a moving target! 

NO WONDER people feel that resume success is some strange alchemy or blind luck…that when they sent it out to a company they should just cross their fingers and hope….it’s possible that the same resume would impress the recruiter from Company A and turn off the recruiter from Company B!!

I dug deeper.

I expanded my research.  I wanted to know what it was that made resumes successful no matter what area a person worked, or to whom they sent it.  I looked at the resumes of countless people who my colleagues had actually brought in to interview to see what had worked on them.  What was it in the resume that made my fellow recruiters want to meet them?  I asked the recruiters and hiring managers at my client companies what it was that they liked about the resumes they shortlisted. 

And then it happened.

Patterns began to form.  Commonalities emerged.  As I spoke with more and more and MORE resume screeners, I started to grasp the truth about what ALL recruiters love and hate.

The answer wasn’t to be found by looking at the opinions of one or even a few recruiters. That was too narrow to get the true picture.  It was by questioning 10, 20, 50 or more recruiters from screening resumes in many job areas with all their diverse backgrounds and attitudes that I could peel back the surface of subjectivity and find out that there really is a formula for the perfect resume. 

The Survey gave me insight

I created a survey asking an extensive list of questions of all the agency recruiters I knew, and even some I didn’t know. By the time I was done I had almost 300 years of collective recruiter input, whose careers spanned over 20 recruitment agencies in Canada, the US, and even the UK. The results confirmed what I had already suspected…I was putting together the formula.

I was thrilled with the results.  If every applicant who sent their resume to me had access to this information, and used it effectively to make their resume…we’d be interviewing every one of them!

But I wasn’t finished.

I thought, agency recruiters are different from company recruiters in some ways….would that mean what they thought was important in a resume was different, too?  So I created an even more detailed survey, this time an electronic one, specifically for company recruiters. Then I thought, if I’m going to get input from company recruiters…why not go for the BEST?  People don’t just want to know how to make the best resume for ANY old company, they want to know what TOP companies want their resume to be!

Only the BEST…

Every year Fortune Magazine in the U.S. creates their ‘Top 100 Companies to Work For’ list.  A similar list, ‘Canada’s Top 100 Employers’ is put together by Maclean’s Magazine in Canada.  I spent months contacting these companies, navigating the bureaucracies and speaking with the managers who could give me access to their recruiters.  Some said they would not participate, some did with pleasure, and others said they would but only if I kept their participation anonymous. I was aiming for a further 300 years worth of recruiter input to match the agency recruiter group. 

By late summer I had done it. 
I had amassed over 600 years of feedback based on specific questions about what made the successful resume!!
After compiling all the data and reading it over I couldn’t believe it…by looking at SO many top recruiters and their interpretations I could screen out the individual, sometimes differing opinions and discover the whole answer. I had in my hand the ingredients for the ultimate resume.

A resume recipe that would put any person who followed it into that top 5%, that EXCELLENT group, EVERY TIME.

The more I read the data the more I realized that the best resume is MORE than just format, more than just the words you use…I discovered that there are FIVE areas, five Master Keys that a person must understand and use in order to be guaranteed success.

Click HERE to receive FREE the entire first chapter of Resume Success! Insider Secrets to Building the Resume Top Companies LOVE!

Every bit of wisdom I had pulled from my interviews, surveys, and personal experience reviewing tens of thousands of resumes could be divided into these five areas.  I’ve used these five, and all the ingredients for success that falls in each, to create the ultimate guide to building a successful resume.  Read it and your resume will never again be ordinary. From now on you can send it out knowing it is THE best of the best.

With cutting edge, present-day, top-to-bottom research; experience with almost a million resumes screened; and with David’s honest and sincere wish to help you get your next fantastic job, ‘RESUME SUCCESS!’ is for you!

‘RESUME SUCCESS! Insider Secrets to Building the Resume Top Companies LOVE!’ is the result of the distillation of over 600 years of resume review, spanning every major industry, from over 50 top companies in North America.  It is the only book of its kind and comes with a guarantee of 100% satisfaction.

What are you waiting for?  Let’s get started!!!

All the very best,

David J. Gardner.