What Do Recruiters Look for in Job Candidates?

Sharon Mak All, HR & Recruiting Advice Leave a Comment

images-1What do career recruiters look for in job candidates? More specifically, what gets the attention of recruiters? Sadly, many excellent job candidates go unnoticed for positions they would fill perfectly. This is usually because of a lack of visibility on social networking sites and the absence of a proper resume.

The Two Things That Grab the Attention of Recruiters

While experience, education and references should certainly be what job seekers possess, these things in and of themselves will not cause a candidate to stand out to a recruiter who is trying to quickly fill a position for a client. What WILL get a recruiter’s attention, however, are two things: a completed Linkedin profile and a stellar resume.

Career Recruiters Want to See Completed LinkedIn Profiles

Anyone who has Internet access has probably heard of LinkedIn, a social networking service that is business-oriented. LinkedIn allows individuals to create profiles that can be seen by recruiters and other contacts. Matt Schwartz, President of MJS Executive Search, writes, “Nowadays, most recruiters and companies are increasingly using sites like LinkedIn to identify talent.”

If a candidate wants to get noticed by a recruiter, he or she has to take the time to create a LinkedIn profile. Also, the profile has to be 100 percent complete. (You would be surprised to discover how many people leave profiles incomplete.)

Job Recruiters Overlook Hard-to-read Resumes

Everyone knows that a job seeker must have a resume. However, not just any resume will appeal to a recruiter. It’s been proven that recruiters spend about 6 seconds looking over a prospect’s resume; therefore, it better be a good one.

The main quality recruiters desire in resumes is readability. Even if a resume contains no grammatical errors, it still may be overlooked by a recruiter if it cannot be easily read. A professional resume writing service can usually get a resume up-to-par in this area. Resumes that are professionally written may help to draw the notice of recruiters.

As is written in article What Recruiters Look for in a 6-Second Resume Scan, “Poorly-organized resumes make it more difficult for recruiters to find information and evaluate a prospect. That’s not news to many job seekers — or, it shouldn’t be — but the science of eye tracking confirms it. Professional resumes used in the study contained less data, less clutter and better formatting, which made them easier to read.”

Based on this information, a job seeker’s best bet is to submit his or her resume to a resume writer so that it can be re-worded and properly formatted.

Job candidates can possess many years of experience in their field and offer impressive recommendations yet remain invisible to recruiters if they lack a completed LinkedIn profile and a professionally-written resume. These are assets that will grab the attention of career recruiters. A job seeker is golden when he or she can back up the right resume and LinkedIn profile with education, skills and experience.

 

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