The first time a recruiter sees your resume, they are scanning it, rather than reading it. In fact, on average, a recruiter or hiring manager initially spends about a mere 7 seconds reviewing your resume. They are skimming your content to see if they should bother to dive any further. If the right words and qualifications jump out at them, they’ll slow down and read more. We’re not saying that every recruiter uses this several second process, but in general, it’s safe to say that a resume must pass the initial scan test.

And then, there are the bots. Many recruiters use applicant tracking software (ATS) to run the initial scan. Recruiters set the parameters, and the bot filters out the applicants based on how well resumes align with the job requirements. It will look at keywords and work history when making its decision. The software can flag or even dismiss a resume, preventing a human from ever even seeing it. 

What You Can Do to Catch the Recruiter’s – and Computer’s – Eye 

With only seconds to snag interest, it’s imperative that you make your resume stand out. Here are some tips to help you survive the scan test.

Tailor the Resume to the Position

This is the most important tip! When we are working on updating a client’s resume, we make sure that the top half of the resume contains all the important information that a recruiter or computer will want to know. If you can simply and clearly show that you are a match for the role  – essentially, demonstrating that you can do the job successfully – then your resume will likely get more than seven seconds of attention.

You should not be submitting the exact same resume for every job application. It’s time consuming, but if you want to optimize your chances, the resume should be customized to fit the position for which you are applying. Make sure that the skill sets outlined in your resume match those included in the job description, prominently where relevant. When possible, try to use the keywords from the job posting in your job history descriptions, as well as professional summary. It would also behoove you to do some research to learn about the company’s culture (which you should be doing before applying anyway) and give concrete examples of why you think you are a good fit for the company in your professional summary.

Use a Simple Layout

Since the first view is a skim, it’s important that the recruiter and the software can quickly see the important highlights of your resume. Don’t be creative; rather, use a simple layout with headers, sub-headers and bullets that quickly draw the eye. Be sure to bold your job titles and avoid fancy formatting and fonts. 

Incorporate Keywords Wisely

While you want to submit a customized resume, you don’t want to submit a spammy one. Use keywords naturally in your content. Don’t stuff them where they don’t fit and don’t overuse them. Recruiters will notice this right away, and the bots will as well.

Make Your Resume ATS friendly

Making your resume bot friendly is pretty similar to making it recruiter friendly (skill set match, use of keywords in the job description, easy to read layout and fonts, no keyword stuffing). But one additional action you can take is to create a separate resume for ATS in plain text format to make it easier for the bot to read. They have trouble with columns, imagery/charts/graphs, footers and tables. 

Only Include Important Information

To make it easier to find the important info on your resume, keep the non-relevant stuff to a minimum or omit it entirely, i.e., complete mailing address, objective statement, photographs and imagery, detailed info about short term positions/hobbies/interests, and references. To dive deeper into what to exclude, read my blog What Not to Include on a Resume. 

You can also find more resume recommendations in our blog Basic Resume Writing Tips. 

What to Watch for in Your WFH Teams

Remote work has been a welcome change for many employees. From eliminating commuting time and expenses, to offering flexibility to attend children’s extracurriculars, to providing total silence to focus, WFH has completely transformed when we work, how we work, and the work-life balance. But not all of the remote work changes are necessarily good for everyone. 

Working from home has drastically reduced our social interactions. Spending long hours alone connecting with other humans only through a computer screen can have some negative mental impacts. A survey by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) found that around two-thirds of people working from home feel isolated or lonely at least sometimes and 17% do all the time. Surprisingly, despite being the more digital generations, younger adults (18 to 44-year-olds) were more likely to report feeling isolated or lonely working at home compared to older adults (45 to 64-year-olds).

Decreased motivation can also become a factor. Lack of in-office camaraderie and connection can impact one’s productivity, as being together in person with your team is a great motivator.

For many WFH employees, this new way of working has blurred the lines between work and home, resulting in an askew work-life balance. By not leaving the office, they are not leaving their work behind. They end up working longer hours and feeling more stressed and frustrated. The APA study revealed that greater than two-thirds of employees who work from home at least part of the time report they have trouble getting away from work at the end of the day always (22%) or sometimes (45%).  

All of these factors are resulting in remote work burnout. 

Signs of Burnout in your WFH Teams

• Not completing tasks on time
• Losing track of time
• Mistakes
• Decreased productivity
• Disengagement
• Increased absenteeism
• Heightened sensitivity to feedback
• Short tempered
• Sad or down
• Irritable
• Lack of motivation

What Employers Can Do to Prevent Remote Work Burnout

Monitor workloads. Don’t expect workers to maintain unreasonable workloads, schedules or timelines.

Encourage taking vacation time. Too often employees don’t take their allotted days off because they have too much to do at work, they don’t want to let teams down, or they fear someone could replace them. Create a culture that actively supports vacation time. Offer supplemental vacation benefits and/or a stipend. You can even mandate it!

Promote work-life balance. Proactively encourage employees to create work-life boundaries. Don’t just talk the talk, but actually walk the walk by prohibiting communication after official work hours and during vacation time.

Prioritize mental wellness. Promote taking mental health days and offer robust mental health benefits, such as counseling.

While remote work has many benefits, it also has drawbacks. It’s important that employers keep an eye out for any WFH employee who may be struggling with this alternative work environment, as well as take steps to prevent burnout from happening in the first place.

By Kimberly Kafafian

During my career in corporate compensation, I’ve been told that women can make less because “they are in a dual income family” and “because she’s on the mommy track.” Despite decades of action, there is still significant gender inequality in the workforce. As an HR consultant I see it everyday in the types of jobs women hold, their positions, career development, and pay. And personally, I hear stories and experiences from women friends and family members.

I will admit, we’ve definitely come a long way from 1970 in terms of education. In 2020, 47.2% of women ages 25 to 64 held a bachelor’s degree and higher, compared with only 11.2 percent in 1970, and the number of women in the labor force with less than a high school diploma, comparing those same time periods, dropped from 33.5% to just 4.8%.

We’ve even made great strides in the type of jobs women hold. In 2020, women accounted for 51.7% of all workers employed in management, professional, and related occupations. 

Unfortunately, these decades of progress were wiped out in months thanks to the pandemic. As schools and daycares closed, it was mostly women workers who shouldered the burden of childcare, leaving their jobs in greater numbers than their male counterparts, interrupting their careers along with their potential future and lifetime income. While the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows 370,000+ jobs were added to the economy in June, with 82.8% of them being women’s jobs, women are still down a net of 395,000 jobs since February 2020. And many more women lost their jobs completely during the pandemic because they were in industries like health care, food preparation and personal service occupations – all of which were severely hit because of COVID-19.

But we can’t just blame the pandemic for the current state of women in the workforce. It simply shone a light on some serious underlying systemic issues, which forced us to take a closer look and push harder for equality.

Making the Workforce a More Just Playing Field for Women

As a woman owner of an HR company with all women employees, I’m committed to making a difference – for myself, for my workers, and for the women employed at my clients’ organizations. I work hard to put women workers on equal footing with their male counterparts by implementing policies and initiatives that even the playing field. Below are some of the areas we as employers, and as a nation overall, need to work on.

Child care

Let’s face it, the brunt of child care responsibilities falls disproportionately on women. As a result, women leave the workforce, take a part time job, or accept a position below their qualifications to fit their child care needs. This is stunting women’s career paths and earning potential – and negatively impacting the labor pool. How can we address both? Businesses need to see childcare as an economic issue rather than a personal one. At this time, businesses are having a hard time filling their talent needs because of a lack of qualified workers. If businesses want to break through the labor shortage, they need to make changes when it comes to child care. By endorsing paternity leave from the leadership level to neutralize the stigma of the “mommy track”, providing child care support, and offering more flexible and remote work options they are better positioning themselves and women workers. They can take note of Meta (Facebook) whose recently expanded remote work options have increased the number of women in its workforce, including tech and leadership roles. 

Education and Experience

Although the number of women in higher-paying professional and managerial positions that were traditionally dominated by men has increased, women are still overrepresented in lower-paying occupations which don’t require higher education. This is impacting women’s lifetime income numbers. PayScale’s Gender Pay Gap Report for 2021 found that without controlling for factors such as education and occupation, women make only $.82 for every dollar a man makes. When comparing job title, years of experience, education, industry, location and other compensable factors, women in the controlled group make $0.98 for every $1.00 a man makes. So these two factors have a huge impact on the pay gap.

So much of this comes back to child care and career development opportunities. Companies need to proactively promote parental and family leave for all genders so that the impact on careers is more balanced, as well as provide child care support, remote work opportunities, flexible work arrangements, and returnships, as well as career development initiatives. These will help prevent an interruption in a woman’s career path, enabling her to get the experience to keep moving forward to better positions and more equal lifetime income. Businesses also need to do better monitoring equal pay for the same job. One initiative that’s making strides is pay transparency. More and more jurisdictions are requiring proactive pay scale disclosure, which will hopefully narrow the wage discrepancies. 

While we’ve come a long way, there’s still so much work to be done.

By Kimberly Kafafian

So, you’ve heard about the host of benefits that having veterans in your workforce can bring to the organization. Your HR team has made the case and leadership is on board. Now, it’s time to get to work attracting this desirable talent. What should you be doing to get ahead of the competition in this tight hiring market? Let me share some insights I have gleaned in my decades of HR experience.

Here are 5 strategies I use with my clients to execute their veteran hiring initiatives.

1. Set the Foundation

Recruiting veterans starts with making sure that your organization is a great place to work. Just like other potential hires, veterans want to work for companies that have a good reputation and a strong brand. So it’s important that you build a desirable culture through things like transparency, clear values and mission that align with employees, diversity, visible and accessible leadership, professional development opportunities, celebration of wins, a sense of community, and trust. Be sure to promote your company as military friendly and ensure that you have dedicated support for veterans. Highlight current veterans in your workforce so potential hires see your commitment. Once you have the right culture in place, promote messaging about it through all your communications.

2. Create a Veteran Hiring Program

Develop your vision for veteran hires, then put it into writing so that you have formal policies and procedures in place. Be sure to address topics like your hiring needs, skills required for the open positions, overarching organizational goals, training, and ROI. Consider creating a separate military hiring webpage.

3. Tap into Leadership

Once your plan is in place, engage senior leadership and identify those who can provide the necessary support and champion the initiative. Make sure they understand the value this untapped talent pool brings to the table, as well as how the skills and attributes gained during military service translate to business needs and goals.

4. Spread the Word

Let others know that you are actively hiring veterans through virtual hiring events, job fairs, on-base events, military job boards (such as military.com’s Career Channel, hirevetsfirst.gov, and helmetstohardhats.org), military newspapers and websites, your business networks, and across your social media channels. 

5. Reassess Your Interviewing Process

Unlike traditional job candidates, veterans don’t tend to promote themselves during job interviews. Considering their military experience as working as part of a team, they usually tamp down the self-promotion and shy away from elaborating on their accomplishments or responsibilities. Because of this, interviewers need to shift techniques when meeting with veterans to a behavioral or situational interview style. This will enable the interviewer to more easily elicit relevant information. Focusing on asking to share stories and avoiding closed-ended questions will prove most beneficial. And most importantly, educate recruiters on how to really dive into veteran resumes so they can translate military skills into business skills.

Hopefully these strategies will help your organization develop and execute a more effective veteran hiring initiative. 

By Kimberly Kafafian

With July 4th upon us, we can’t help but think of those who have made our freedom possible. We celebrate them with parades, firework shows, and barbeques. But, how can we give back to them? How can we show our appreciation for everything they have sacrificed for our country? I believe one way we can thank a veteran is to help them transition into civilian life by hiring them. It’s good for the soul, good for the country, and, quite honestly, it’s also good for business. 

Nearly 200,000 transitioning service members enter civilian life each year. And the experience these veterans gained during their time in the military makes them ideal candidates for all types of positions, in all kinds of businesses, of all sizes. Unfortunately, many employers look at the resume of a veteran and are unable to see how the skills and training these men and women received can benefit their business. This is a terrible lost opportunity, for the hiring company and the veteran. As a human resource professional with 20+ years’ experience, I’m here to explain how those military job descriptions translate into real, practical capabilities that can boost your bottom line and help you address your hiring and retention challenges.

Increased Performance

During their military careers, veterans acquire a wide variety of expertise and skill sets that they can bring to organizations, which can enhance performance and culture. 

Leadership.

As military personnel rise up in the ranks, they take on more leadership roles. Even those as young as their early 20s may be training and overseeing teams. During their time in the military, they are making decisions, planning, and providing guidance to their subordinates. So when you hire a veteran, you are gaining a worker with real-life leadership skills already in place.

Teamwork.

No man is an island in the military. In the end, it’s all about the team working together toward a common goal. While military personnel are encouraged to take initiative, their duties are a blend of individual and group productivity. In addition, they learn how groups relate to each other in relation to an overarching objective. 

Trainability.

Since their first day in the military, veterans were being trained. And, over the course of their military career, they are expected to continuously learn and develop – from following orders and completing tasks to taking initiative and responsibility. Trainability and ownership are traits you want in your workforce.

Decision-Making.

As mentioned above, the military builds leaders. How do they do that? By training recruits to analyze all information before making a decision. This training has afforded veterans the ability to make the best choice available when looking at the options. 

Goal-Oriented.

Business is all about setting goals – project, production, sales. The military is extremely focused on goal achievement. Their members are trained to concentrate on the mission at hand and then work together as a team to achieve the targeted goal.

Studies show that veterans’ contributions to a company boost performance and reduce costs. One such study found that, on average, veterans perform at higher levels and are less likely to leave a company. According to the CEB Corporate Leadership Council, “for a company of 1,000 employees with 25 percent military veteran new hires, cost savings amounted to a whopping $325,000 per year.”   

Veterans Are an Untapped Talent Pool

According to the Department of Labor, there were 386,000 unemployed military veterans across the United States last year. That number, combined with the couple hundred thousand members leaving the military every year, is quite a large potential pool of talent to pull from – something to seriously consider in this current hiring crisis. And when you add in the skills and work ethic associated with this group, you have untapped prospective workers that are good for your business. Plus, you will be helping a veteran make use of the skills they acquired in a civilian role, while at the same time decrease the unemployment numbers.  

So during this time when you are feeling a bit patriotic, I urge you to think beyond the barbeques and fireworks celebrations and consider how hiring a veteran can simultaneously help them and your bottom line.