Lately, we’ve been receiving 3-10 resumes a day from candidates—clearly using an outsourcing service.  Via fax.  To make matters worse, up until today, there was no way to opt out of these faxes. 

 I’m shocked that candidates think that’s an effective way to deal with recruiters. 

 These resumes are all formatted exactly the same way.  They look exactly the same, one page with the career summary—what we really care about, where you worked, for how long and in what role — crammed into the bottom 4 inches of the page.

Here’s the takeaway from this type of presentation-  the candidate is too lazy to customize a resume that differentiates them.  And too lazy to send a cover note introducing themselves and again, in quick bullets, letting us know what they are all about.  And really out of touch on marketing, communication and technology.  For that reason, and the fact that I’m too lazy to process a fax into a digital file for our records, they are tossed into the recycling bin.

Take a look at this recent WSJ article about what the 2011 resume should look like: 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303657404576363612674900024.html#