How to Help the Recruiter Help You, Part 1
08.18.2021 | Blog
Hello, readers!
I am Jeremy Salzer, the new recruiter here at Bond Consultants. After spending three years in the JET Programme, I took a position at a sales office for a Japanese company before becoming a recruiter. So, I understand how tough the job hunt can be, having gone through the rounds with recruiters for my two transitions. I hope you’ll forgive the shameless self-plug, but feel free to check out this article about my experience.
Now being on the other side of the candidate/recruiter relationship, I have learned a lot about what recruiters do. In this first half of this two-part article, I am going to give you a quick rundown of what recruiters due for the hiring process, and how you can help us help you find the opportunities you are looking for.
Gotta Search ‘em All!
The first, and probably most obvious, thing recruiters do is looking through resumes. We actually come across resumes in a variety of ways and use our time to quickly look over all of what we find and select the best candidates to contact, and hopefully connecting with our clients. Even if there is no opening that is a good fit for a candidate, we keep them in our database, contacting them later with any good fits as soon as a client has an opening. Of course simply looking at resume’s submitted directly to our website alone will not give us the chance to meet many candidates.
As part of our daily routines, we recruiters perform two types of searches. The first is a general search for candidates with certain skills. In the case of Japanese recruitment agencies like Bond Consultants, this means a daily search for candidates with standout Japanese language abilities and experiences. For this, we utilize sites where people post resumes on their accounts, like Indeed and Monster, and narrow down the candidates we feel will be the best suited for our positions.
The second type of search is more targeted, for potential candidates to fill more specialized positions. These jobs usually require little to no Japanese, but do require the candidate to have more focused work history with desired skills, industries, and knowledge. ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn, and other similar sites where candidates directly submit their resumes to the job posters, are typically where we scope out potential candidates. Then, we look through the submitted resumes and choose the candidates who are the best fit.
Think, Before You Post.
Now that you know how recruiters search, I will give you some tidbits to better your chance of your resume catching a recruiter’s attention. Because we have to view no less than dozens of resumes per day, we have to be quick, and any resumes that do not stand out to us or that are hard to read, will be quickly overlooked instead of carefully looked over. These tips will help your resume be spotted by us and considered for submission to our clients, which means a greater chance of finding you your next professional step.
My first tip is to be up to date. I’ve been a recruiter for only two months, and I’ve already seen so many resumes that did not demonstrate the candidate’s current work experience. This also goes for any external sites, like LinkedIn or a personal portfolio, that you may have linked to your posted resume. Recruiters check both the resume and sites listed upon it when applicable for the job. However, we have to manage our time, and with so many resumes to check on a daily basis, we can’t use too much of it to piece together incomplete information and unclear or missing dates.
Secondly, is to be thorough with the experiences listed on your resume. As a recruiter, seeing a resume with only one sentence describing each previous job that has only the years of work listed can make defining a person’s true work experience and capability difficult for me. Generally, a bulleted list or a couple of well written sentences about a candidate’s experience coupled with the month and year for the beginning and end dates gives me a lot better picture. If you use an objective statement, make sure that it is clear. For example, letting us know if you can relocate, and what you want to do in your professional life, tells us a lot about you when we look over your work history and consider what opportunities we can offer you.
Another thing that helps us is when a candidate can be concise on their resume. The usual advice is to make your resume no more than two pages. Of course, your number of years’ experience and positions can make this a challenge, especially if you are a candidate that wants to list extra information—like skills, accomplishments, and certifications—in addition to your work history. However, we recruiters like to see all we can about the professional side of a person. So, you really want to focus the most important parts of you, work experience et al, for us to notice about you.
Stepping away from the resume for a moment, there are some other things that you can do to better aid us in finding the best fitting opportunities for you. One huge thing is to be knowledgeable about the job market. Whether you are applying to a particular job as a seasoned professional or a fresh graduate looking for your first professional steps, you have to know what is realistic about your prospects. This is especially true in terms of what salary to expect. For example, I have come across a people with fresh bachelor’s degrees wanting $50,000 or more per year for their first office job, despite not having any professional work experience. It’s not impossible to find an entry level position willing to pay that much, but your opportunities as a candidate drastically decrease when you are not at least open to understanding what salary you can realistically expect.
One more important thing you can do is be prepared to be contacted by recruiters. I am not being cheeky when I say this. Recruiters act quickly when they find a great candidate because agencies are often in competition with each other to fill the same positions for the same clients. If you post/submit your resume before 8:00 am, you can expect a call, email, or message from a recruiter before 11:00 am that same day. We want to get in touch with as many good potential candidates for any and all current and future positions, and such quick contact means that we noticed you.
That wraps up part one. If you are interested in more tips about resumes, check out this article posted on our website. Also, if you would like to know what positions we currently have available, please feel free to check out our job board. Lastly, if you have any questions about any part of the review process or ideas of what you would like to read, please feel free to reach out to us on any of the links below.
Thank you so much for reading!
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