Getting Your CV Ready

by Veronica Blatt

Our guest blogger is Jason Elias of Elias Recruitment in Sydney, Australia. Elias Recruitment is a specialist legal recruitment consultancy, finding lawyers for law firms, not for profits and corporates, across Australia. Jason is the Chairman-ELect of the NPAworldwide Board of Directors and received our Chairman’s Award in 2014. Jason is also a Fellow of the peak recruitment industry body in Australasia  the RCSA (Recruitment & Consulting Services Association).

A study by The Ladders found that professional recruiters give most resumes an initial 6-second review to look at key details before deciding whether to contact you for an interview.

During that 6-second window recruiters are quickly scanning: Read the rest of this entry »


How To Avoid Roadblocks That Sabotage Your Job Applications

by Veronica Blatt

Today’s guest blogger is Keith Grafman, Founder and Principal of Creative Content Consulting, LLC. CCC positions digital identity for your career, dating, and business, with a consistent presence across your digital footprint. For more information, visit: www.CreativeContentConsulting.com

Wondering why your resume that’s chock full of color, graphics, pictures, unique characters and symbols isn’t landing you interviews? The culprit is most likely all of those fancy bells and whistles—they typically work against you.

Don’t let this discourage you from taking a creative approach to your resume and career positioning because you do need to individualize yourself, but it’s important to avoid confusing the parsing systems. Rather than leading with aesthetics, focus on articulating value.

For those of you that have heard of ATS systems, AKA Application Tracking Systems, that’s not the only part of your job application process that should concern you. There are also systems referred to as parsing systems. The simple explanation of a parsing system is the technology responsible for analyzing and interpreting your digital application/resume data to be organized and reviewed thereafter. More specifically, have you ever noticed when you’re prompted to submit/attach your resume/CV, immediately thereafter, a whole bunch of information (such as your name, phone number, city/state, etc.) populates? That’s a parsing system at work.

When an applicant is prompted to attach a resume/CV, there are typically options to submit a variety of formats, e.g. Microsoft Word, PDF, etc.

There’s a lot of debate surrounding the use of Microsoft Word vs. PDF documents for the digital application process—the fact is, both file formats have value.

The benefits of submitting a PDF-version of your resume:

  • Typically an accepted format for job application submissions
  • Keeps your resume formatting secured for submission process
  • Protects your data, organization and formatting within the document

The benefits of having a Word-version of your resume:

  • An easy-to-reference version that can be modified as needed
  • Some parsing systems may require the submission of a Word formatted document

Ideally, it’s optimal to have both a Word and PDF version of your resume, so you are able to:

  • Modify/add any relevant new details, accomplishments, etc. as your career progresses
  • Control the context and visual presentation of your career-positioning assets

If you find yourself confused about which resume file format is optimal for a job application submission, my suggestion would be to submit as a PDF whenever it’s an acceptable file format—This way, you’ll be able to protect your resume’s formatting and content.


Top Recruitment Blogs of 2019

by Veronica Blatt

top recruitment blogsIt’s a holiday week in both Canada and the USA, so we’re only posting once and giving you a chance to catch up on your reading if you are among the many people away from the office. In case you missed them the first time around, here are our top recruitment blogs of the year to date:

Three Reasons Why You’re Not Getting Interviews: How to Create an ATS-Friendly Resume Automation has made it more difficult for job seekers’ resumes to be seen by the proper hiring authorities. Applicant tracking systems (ATS) “read” resumes looking for keywords. If your resume doesn’t include the right words and the right formatting for machine-reading, it’s very possible you’ll be overlooked. This post includes tips for how to create a resume that will be “seen” and hopefully lead to more interviews! Read the rest of this entry »


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