How do recruiters use online resumes?

After a HOT weekend, I'm back to searching for excellent marketing professionals (no, I don't do that on the weekend) and focusing on sourcing resumes off the internet (did I tell you how much I love google?). As you know, my role here at Microsoft is all about finding great marketing talent. Sometimes what I am finding is a resume, sometimes I am meeting people at monthly organization meetings and sometimes I am finding a lead (usually a name, maybe a bio, and some contact info off the internet). I also collect competitive intelligence that I share with marketing recruiters here.

I am able to find quite a number of quality marketing resumes on the internet and I think that blogging technology has really caused the number of people posting their resumes online to go up. It's just so easy now. So knowing that those posting resumes online really want to hear from recruiters (in-house as well as 3rd party) and hiring managers, I thought I would share some new (some maybe not so new) thoughts with you regarding how to effectively post your resume.

I've already gone on and on about keywords and last week I talked about the importance of creating an effective headline for your resume (I was talking about resume databases but the same applies for resumes on your blog or website). Make sure the link that comes up in my google search results is compelling. Make we want to click on it! I'm surprised at how many of these links are “joe smith's resume”, “Jane Doe's resume”. And these are marketing people! Please!

Another issue I have found with online resumes hosted on websites or blogs is that people don't include their contact information in the text of resume itself. They may expect people to use the “contact” link to reach them. This might not be very effective because most companies use resume databases. So when I find a great resume online, I forward it to the people that enter the info into our database. If the contact info isn't on there, the resume doesn't get in at all. Many other companies have folks dedicated solely to sourcing talent as well, so this is not particularly unique to Microsoft. By not including your contact info on your resume, you are keeping recruiters from effectively sharing out your resume. So it's the difference between one recruiter reviewing your resume and ALL of the recruiters of a company viewing your resume. It's a numbers game.

One thing I have seen on some peoples' online resumes that I really like is a link to a .doc or .pdf resume. This allows us to entered a resume in our database that is formatted to be viewed as a document rather than a web page. Keep in mind that people view your resume in a number of different ways. Via a web browser is one way, but also think about if your resume is e-mailed as an attachment or if it is printed out or if the recruiter might cut and paste your resume (which is why I would discourage the use of headers).

Another thing you might want to think about is the stickiness of your resume page. Take a lesson from online marketers, who know that if you provide links that may send your viewer off  your page, those viewers might not come back. So for example, if you want your reader to understand the focus of the company you work for, you can link the company title on your resume to the corporate website of the company. But in doing so, you run the risk of the viewer clicking on that link and then not remembering to come back to your page or finding something “more interesting“ on that company's page. My recommendation is to not provide links off of your resume page. If someone is really curious about the company you work for, I am sure they can look it up themselves, but don't invite them to leave your resume page by creating a link. If they are like me, they cannot resist the urge to click on it ; )

Thinking these things through and providing the right format and the right information could make your resume a much better tool for a recruiter to match you up with a position. The staffing industry is still looking into how advances in technology will affect our jobs. But one thing that has stayed consistent in the industry for decades is the resume. So finding the best way to use new technology while staying true to the functional usage scenarios for the resume will benefit you in your search.