Who Are You Writing For?

Eleven people applied for the Recruiting Coordinator position at Southwestern Illinois College (SWIC). As part of the four-person hiring committee, I reviewed all the résumés to help find the strongest candidates. 

Two were immediately disqualified for targeting the wrong position in their cover letters.

Of the nine résumés that remained:

• 8 were not professionally written. This is a guess, of course, but an educated one. The most visually appealing résumé included one with a two-column format and a photo. It was not selected.
• 6 were two pages; 2 were three pages long.
• All of them included a customized cover letter, as requested in the job ad.
• In general, my fellow committee members were much more critical of the cover letters than they were of the résumés. 
• 4 were selected for interviews. I agreed with three of those choices.

That’s where it stands as of this writing. By the time you read this, there is a good chance that an official offer has been extended and accepted. One person is going to have an even happier holiday season.

Eight will not…at least not as a SWIC employee.

Some of them will perhaps start a position at one of the 10 other jobs they applied for using the exact same résumé. Some of them will postpone their job search until after the new year. Some of them will go to holiday parties and tell their friends how tough the job market is right now.

And a large percentage of the unchosen will never suspect that NOT A SINGLE APPLICANT appeared to customize their résumé for the position. Some had professional experience that was more aligned with the job requirements, but clearly it was up to the reader to make that connection.

For some of them, it might not have made a difference.

But for those of you who serve clients in competitive job search situations, think of targeting the résumé as a bare minimum, drop-dead, gotta-do checklist item that is sure to help them stand out among a pool of DIY résumé writers.

Marketing guru Seth Godin said it this way:

“It’s so tempting to write for everyone. But everyone isn’t going to read your work, someone is….Name the people you’re writing for. Ignore everyone else.”

In the case of the new SWIC Recruiting Coordinator, someone who ignored that advice is still going to get a job offer. But the candidates who ignored that advice and were not interviewed could have increased their chances tremendously by thinking about the mindset of the people they were writing for.

I expect to see more of this dynamic as AI empowers people to try writing their own résumé or cover letter with a few simple prompts. In the wrong hands, AI is hardly an equalizer. It ensures we’ll have more work in the future. Strategic and authentic writing are both in high demand, still the byproduct of critical thinking.

I look at it this way. I see all these fancy video clips and recipes for the most appetizing meals and desserts, so simple even a non-cooking fool like me could do it. Except even if it turns out good, it’s an accident at best.

Stay in your lane, amateurs! Don’t you know that we’re trained for this?