Your resume can kill your career!

 QUESTION:

I currently have a job but I’m looking for better opportunities. I have been sending my resume out and I have sent it to at least 15 companies without a single request for interview. What am I doing wrong?

 ANSWER:

First of all: STOP SENDING OUT YOUR RESUME. You might be doing yourself a lot of harm and not know it.

 A few things may be happening and there are three things you need to consider before your continue your search:

1) The information and the structure of your resume.

2) Where you are sending your resume and why.

3) The suicide potential by sending out your resume to 15 companies while you already have a job.

I’ll focus on the last one (number 3) because it is the most critical. Very negative things can happen from blasting your resume and posting it all over the internet.

 1) You might send the resume to a company for a position just to see what happens, you might do it twice or maybe three times in a few years and then you see a job opening that truly is a perfect fit for you and it matches your career goals. You send your resume again. The company looks at it and thinks “Oh! I know this guy, he sends his resume for EVERYTHING out there. Not focused. Go to the next one”.

 I’m not making this up. As a Plant Manger I had people send me their resume for an engineering position, an H.R. position and a sales position within two years…and their background was in purchasing! I would never hire someone that lacks that much focus because it is very likely that once I give them a job they will start blasting resumes again.

 2) On thing that many hiring managers with access to public job boards will do when they get a resume (I do it myself!) is search for the person in a public database.  It can signal if the candidate is an active job seeker which is not good.

 3) Once you blast resumes to many companies and you post them all over the internet you better know that they are out there and can come back to haunt you in a bad way.  I have received resumes that look pretty damn good and when I pull up my files or search the internet I find the person and SURPRISE! The resume is different. Titles have changed, in one case positions disappeared to cover-up being fired or spending very little time on a job. Assuming I’m still interested in the master of disguise, Can you guess which companies I call first for references?  

 4) Your current company can find out and not be happy. While they may not immediately fire you it will send the message that you will not be there long so you will likely be left out of promotions, training opportunities and salary increases.

Follow these rules if you don’t want to get burned:

1)      Be very selective to where you send your resume

2)      Work with private services that don’t provide public paid access to your resume

3)      Avoid resume job boards and public sites

4)      Keep track of your resume versions and be very careful on how you manipulate and change the information.