Your resume is a shop window, a taster of everything you have to offer as an employee. It’s your chance to display your talent, experience, essential qualities, and qualifications.
In fact, it is very likely that any potential employer will refer to your resume during your interview. The information you provide will form the basis of many of the questions they ask you. With that in mind, it’s important that you get your resume right. Here are some resume statistics to help you do just that.
How important is a resume?
The history of the resume goes back a lot further than you might think. In fact, it can be traced back to Leonardo Da Vinci in 1482.
There’s a reason that resumes are still important today. In the modern jobs market, they are often your one chance to gain access to a company’s recruitment process. In many ways, a resume is like a text-based pitch for you as a person.
You are selling yourself as an employee, but you’re limited to words on a page. Luckily, in the modern world, it’s much easier to tailor your resume. A few minutes of research should give you a picture of your potential employer and should be the first step in your job search.
For example, are they advertising their posts on .ai domains? If so, this represents a tech-focused employer. Make sure your resume shows your tech credentials. This will put you ahead of other job candidates.
Why are resume stats important?
Stats can reveal the hard facts about any given topic and are therefore vital in helping you focus on what matters when honing your resume. Knowing the landscape and pitfalls of writing resumes can give you the edge over candidates who are in the dark.
Being aware of these stats is as fundamental as doing your research on the operational aspects of the role you are applying for. Creating an ideal resume means arming yourself with knowledge, and being prepared.
Key Resume Stats
A resume is as important in the job-hunting process as compiling a list of insightful questions to ask a recruiter. Let’s look at some key stats to help you focus the content of your resume into a winning format.
Volume
To start with, the odds can look daunting, for example, according to job site Zippia, only 2% of resumes are successful in terms of getting the job seeker a job interview. It’s also true that an individual job hunter needs to send a high volume of resumes to get a job. Again Zippia says that sending 50 to 100 resumes is fairly average.
It’s also important to ensure your emailed resumes avoid the spam folder of your prospective employers. Avoid using an unprofessional email address, in other words, anything too jokey or immature.
Many corporate accounts now use spf validation, where only emails with the right IP address get past the gatekeeper. If a job advert gives a specific email for applications, make sure you use it. Don’t be tempted to queue jump by personally contacting hiring managers or HR staff.
Length
The maximum length for a resume is generally understood to be 2 pages. But according to Forbes those with less than ten years of experience should be able to fit the essential information onto one page. However, a word of caution: 77% of employers expect experienced workers to provide more than a single-page resume, two-page resumes are preferred. (Zippia)
From the point of view of a hiring manager, short is sweet, especially when there is a high volume of applicants. In fact, hiring managers spend an average time of 6 seconds reading each resume. But it’s important to get the crucial information across, in other words, your relevant skills, without too many unnecessary buzzwords or hard selling.
Ultimately, try to be concise but also insightful. Remember that you also have a cover letter to express certain facts. For instance, if you’re applying for an app developer role, you might want to highlight your knowledge of app hosting such as Platform.sh. But this, equally, could be included in your cover letter.
Content
A well-written resume is going to work for you, and it’s worth spending time and effort to craft a professional one. It’s not only going to boost your employment chances, but it can also boost your earnings, as a professionally written resume can raise your earning power by 7% to 32%. (Zippia)
In addition to enhancing your resume, and income, you could also consider other aspects of your personal financial well-being. One important step is to improve your credit score, which can positively impact your overall financial stability.
Covering every crucial element of your employment history, skills, and qualifications takes a comprehensive approach.
It’s important, despite the volume of resumes you may send out, to tailor your resume to each job. A generic resume will not help you, 63% of recruiters expect to receive resumes tailored to the post. (Zippia) For example, An applicant of a web development role might mention their experiences of using alternatives to Kubernetes for open-source container orchestration systems.
Employers are also put off by resumes that neglect to address the job description. In fact, the average resume only uses half of the keywords in the job description. (Forbes) Just paying attention to this detail will put you ahead of the competition in the hiring process.
Style
Just as business communication has evolved with Vonage cloud communication platforms or web-based chat and video calls. So, resumes will continue to evolve to better serve both job hunters and recruiters. Part of this evolution is knowing not only how to present your resume in a physical format but also digitally.
One of the challenges of adapting to the digital format is finding the perfect font. According to HubSpot recruiters, Times New Roman is the most popular font choice for resumes. It looks neat on the physical page, and can be viewed on most operating systems.
Color too, is equally important. In the past, a print may have been entirely black and white. Digitally, we can use any color that we like. Be sure to choose a color scheme that isn’t overly distracting.
Where you do use color, try to draw attention to the most important elements on the page.
It’s also important to ensure that your resume is ATS-friendly by using an appropriate template.
