A lot of clients, when they hire a professional resume writer, are expecting the fancy resume templates with lots of colors, pictures, tables and graphs. While these resumes are pretty, they are very poor at actually getting you a job. And I’ll explain why.
Fancy resumes can’t be read by the Applicant Tracking System
Getting a job has changed quite a bit in the last few years. With automation making it’s way into every facet of life, many companies use a computer program called the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). This is a software program that scans your resume for words that correspond to the job you are applying for. Then this program ranks your resume among all the other resumes received from best to worse.
The problem with fancy resume templates and the ATS is that the computer program can not read pictures, text boxes or tables, which are all elements that make up these sophisticated resume templates. So what the program does when it encounters these elements is skip over large sections of your resume and rank you at the bottom or either throw it out entirely, all before you get into the hands of a real person.
And on the slim chance that you do get into the hands of a human, hiring managers don’t like these resumes either. Many are hard to read and are confusing. The information you read to relay is not easily found. Hiring managers spend about 8 seconds each on a resume, and if all your information is not easily laid out, your resume may end up in the trach pile.
There are times when these fancy templates are appropriate, as in a resume for a graphics artist or some other creative career.
This is not to say that I can not or will not do these resumes, but in most cases, it would be a waste of your money.
Sara