The Pandemic Changed Everything About Work, Except the Humble Résumé

Unlike those seeking jobs in the days of faxed and mailed résumés, today’s job candidates might apply for one position through a company’s job portal, have their résumés uploaded and stored in a database, and then be matched with a different role at the same company months or years later.

“If companies are experiencing labor shortages in different areas, they may very well go back to their database,” Ms. Salemi said.

That is why keywords matter. Ms. Minshew counsels people to look closely at the job description and highlight keywords and skills the company is looking for in that role. “Make sure that, if it’s relevant and applicable, you’re highlighting similar skills or even some of the same keywords on your résumé,” Ms. Minshew said.

Ms. Minshew noted that a 2019 report from Jobscan found that nearly 99 percent of Fortune 500 companies used an applicant tracking system, which could put job seekers who don’t include the right terms in their résumé at a disadvantage.

Part of why the résumé has stayed constant while work itself has transformed is that no one method has come along to take over.

“The traditional résumé is in the process of being disrupted, but I don’t think it’s necessarily clear yet what the outcome will be,” Ms. Minshew said — adding that it might be replaced by several products instead of a single one. Part of the reason straying from traditional formatting is risky is a résumé could be discarded by the software screening it if it can’t process a candidate’s experience correctly. “This is a classic situation of, most people want something different,” she said — but no one has yet had the power to really change things. Though she did say that a number of recruiters — humans not robots — primarily consider a candidate’s LinkedIn profile, rather than a résumé, which is why she encourages people to keep both up-to-date.

But just because the format of the résumé hasn’t changed much, it doesn’t mean job seekers shouldn’t try to make theirs look great, especially in creative fields.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/22/business/pandemic-work-resumes.html