A good résumé:

• contains bulleted information
• is written in the third person
• is objective and formal
• contains, in this order, a brief Summary of Qualifications, Areas of Strength or Expertise, Professional Experience (in reverse chronological order), Professional Affiliations, Computer / Technical Skills and Education
• gives maximum focus to the most recent job (prior experiences are summarised)
• provides the reader a balance of responsibilities and accomplishments for each designation held.

Unarguably, your résumé forms part of the first impression your potential employer gets of you. In this economy, with a massive down turn of jobs, most employers have to face a stack of such résumés. What does it take, to ensure that of the whole lot, your résumé piques your employer’s interest?

A résumé has become the key to your dream job…but it gets just 10-15 seconds before the employer decides between his desk and the dustbin as your résumé’s final destination.

Specific job applications can be more targeted. It is always good if you know the company before-hand and enhance your résumé, customising it to their requirements. That way, you can present your qualification, experience and achievements in the way that suits the recruiter and the needs best. To the maximum extent possible, make it as brief, concise and to the point—like a capsule that is quickly edible, rather than as a 5-course meal! This will make it easy for the employer to sort through the résumés. A covering letter would ideally help you project your achievements and your suitability to the position offered, in a much concise and customised manner.

While writing your résumé…

If you intend to submit your résumés in online job portals, do it only after making sure that your Résumé has all the necessary industry-specific keywords. Search engines should be able to pull out your profile every time an employer is out there seeking for potential employees.

Consider your résumé as a marketing tool…and make the most of it to market a very invaluable product—You!

Dos

• Customise it, as much as possible, to the job in question.
• Fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana and Palatino Linotype would be good choices—since they are the ones popularly used and available on every computer these days. Fancy fonts might look good on your system—but if the recipient does not have it installed in the receiving system, your résumé could boil down to squares and dots and illegible symbols! Not to mention your employer may not share your taste in fonts.
• Restricting the font-size between 10 and 12 and formatting the text with bullets and margins will help enhance readability. As in all things, simplicity is the key here: so keep the language and format basic and easy to comprehend.
• Author it powerfully and substantially.
• There are a lot of employers who use online technologies to sort résumés. Hence, it is safer to make it as neat and as presentable as possible.

Don’ts

• Avoid stuffing too much of personal data that is of no interest to the employer.
• Avoid padding—adding elaborate words and decorating it with unnecessary sentences will only irritate the employer!
• Never fabricate experiences, education, references, and other credentials. Not only is this unethical, but most employers routinely conduct verification and checks. Once false information is uncovered, consider your job goodbye.

Social media sites like Linkedin, Facebook and MySpace have become very popular among industrial bigwigs in searching for, and finding, potential employees. Hence, when you are in the lookout for a job, you can use all your web profiles to show why you are an ideal candidate. The greater your visibility, the better your chances–assuming you use your web presence to your advantage.

With a wounded economy, scarce vacancies, and a multitude of applicants, the situation becomes extremely competitive and frustrating. To surface as the perfect choice from a plethora of résumés is a challenging task–remember that the employer reviewing your résumé is probably furstrated as well. So, create a résumé that works best for both parties—you and the employer.

As in all matters of life, reliability and trust is very important when seeking a job. Employers carry out various checks—pre-employment screening, identity verification, reference verifications, etc precisely because trust can be very difficult to attain during these early interactions, and even if trust exists, verification must accompany it.  A ‘seal of verification’ in your résumé which affirms that your credentials have been verified and which allows the resume viewer to review the verification records will save the employer a lot of trouble! Here at Crederity, we’ve found that over 85% of hiring employers would prefer to review such resumes. If you’re curious, you should try out Crederity.

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A few examples and numbers of resume fraud…

• In February 2006, David Edmondson (President and CEO) of RadioShack Corp.—a leading electronics retailer of US—was forced to resign for putting up false credentials in his résumé.
• VERITAS, the international software giant, sacked its former CFO for having falsely claimed a Stanford MBA in his résumé.
• In the UK, 39% of organisations admit to have gone through situations, ending up hiring people who has supposedly lied in their job application.
• According to BBC Risk Advisory Group 2004 study: two-thirds of the résumés they received had discrepancies! Of the various statistics:
  • Women in their 30s were the worst offenders
  • 55% of CVs had employment discrepancies
  • 36% changed academic details

…and a very interesting caught-in-the-act instance!

The Port Authority of New York, in the late 90s, published an ‘electricians with experience in using Sontag conductors required’ advertisement. Almost one-third of the applicants claimed they had experience in using a Sontag conductor. The catch? A ’Sontag conductor’ didn’t exist!

The 10-point formula to catch that dishonest résumé

1. Check for inconsistencies — slip-ups in dates, contradictions between job titles and duties, etc.
2. Make interviewees fill out applications—and compare this with the résumé! Thanks to various “professional résumé writers”, most applicant do not even realise what is on their résumé. Some recruitment agencies juggle information between various résumés, creating fraud (with the approval of candidates).
3. Test the applicant’s skills—through on-site, hands-on tests; check if claims of proficiency in a program or skill are true.
4. Check references, then ask for more—do not be satisfied with the references in the résumé. They’re obviously ‘good’ sources. Ask for details of a colleague/supervisor/ex-employee and follow up on them.
5. Make sure institutions exist—call the college admissions office, verify degrees and other claims.
6. Investigate deep into “self-owned business” claims—names and numbers of past clients. Try to get their details / samples of the work done for them.
7. Don’t confuse referrals with references—thoroughly check candidates referred by co-workers or friends.
8. Don’t blindly trust your hiring consultants—one never knows if they have passed on a well-screened résumé. Do your own verification checks.
9. Analyse why the applicant left his previous company—the situations; and if the firm had been liquidated firms, try and understand what role the applicant played towards the company’s fate.
10. Do not be biased against a set/group of people—come out of the stereotyped thought that only youngsters stoop to such frauds; reports show that 49% of the perpetrators were above 40.
11. And finally – verify the potential employee’s background using the world-wide-web. Probe deep into any mismatch with the details given in the résumé.

At Crederity, we’re trying to make it easier to accomplish some of the steps above and others to assess the authenticity and credibility of credentials and identity, to benefit both job seekers and employers, as well as people from all walks of life outside of the employment context.

What happens during a bad hire?

It is estimated that in the US, a single bad hire can bring losses of $25,000, in the case of a entry-to-mid-level position, and close to $1 million or more for an executive position. A bad hire can also mean an estimated loss to companies of approximately $40,000 in severance pay, training, wasted human resources time, possible search firm fees, loss of productivity, and impact on employee morale.

In today’s rat-race job market, many people are ready to go to any means to make the recruiter believe that they are the ones the company needs. And if you thought it happens only in small-scale institutions, where the chances of a background check may be perceived to be less likely, well you’ve already read what happens in big, multinational companies!

Pre-employment screening, though an added step, is a smart idea; you only stand to benefit! Accept it: the expense of a bad hire far outweighs the cost of a background check.

Crederity is the solution

We at Crederity currently verify a plethora of information including identity audits and identity verification, background checks, pre-employment screening, education verification, employment verification, online checks, legalities, reference checks, employment status check…You name it, and we’ll get it done!  We gather information from references and relevant credential-granting organizations directly and even authenticate them! Our technology also allows us to complement our existing proccess with the use of web-administered quizzes for individuals combined with response analysis to determine how truthful an individual is being. And if you are hiring through a recruitment agency, we will verify them as well! So, if it’s a résumé that has the Crederity Seal, you can gain peace of mind that the resume holder has passed a significant test of integrity.

We think we have built a great system for helping to build trust online, but we know there is always room for improvement . As always, if you have suggestions on how we can improve our services to better address these problems, please let us know!