Doctor Bluto says:
Tue, 11th Nov 200812:23 pm 

Ryan,

I have worked for an IT staffing firm for over 6 years now. Most of the resumes I look at are from online sources. The only time someone would need to bring in a resume is once the have a face to face interview with someone. Good stock paper is an excellent idea for that. That being said, whenever anyone brings in a resume on fancy paper I tell them to keep it. I prefer to just print one out on white paper because I use their resume for note taking.

Something else to think about if you’re still sending out your resumes via snail mail. Most companies that are medium sized or larger have a content management system for any resumes they receive. That means they need the resume in word format (resume.doc). So email or submit your resume electronically, it is more likely you will get a call back (at least from me, otherwise I have to fire up the old scanner and scan your resume into a word document, then put it into our content management system…I likely won’t do that because I have other things that need to get done and there are more resumes to go through in my inbox and ones that have been submitted directly to our jobs site…that may seem harsh, but I am being realistic about it. I can’t be expected to spend 15 minutes every time I get a resume in the mail just to get a resume from hard copy to soft, especially when there are others just like it in my email inbox.)

Something I don’t agree with is keeping a resume short. When I look at a resume, I typically take 8 or 9 seconds to look over it to see if the skills listed match what our client is looking for. If they do not, I put the resume into our database incase any opportunities open up that better fit the person’s background and move on to the next. The more you have down the more I know about your background which will help me identify you as a qualified candidate for a position. I will give you a quick example. I am currently recruiting for an outside sales position. They will be selling telecom services and equipment to medium and large businesses. After a day on the boards I get about 25 responses. I go through and look at the experience of the people, most of which paid no attention to the “Must have 4+ years experience in telecom sales” or the “business to business experience is a must”, but when I saw someone who had sold telecom equipment for 2 years 4 years ago, I called him to talk about what he has been doing for the past 4 years. Turns out, he was selling telecom equipment for a different company and didn’t mention what he was selling and to whom. He said he didn’t want his resume to go over 2 pages. That is just silly. As the interviewer, I want to see everything up front so I can make an educated decision based on your background. The more you have on your resume, the more likely it is I am going to contact you about a job.

Just throwing my 2 cents worth in on this. Good luck in your search, everyone!