A top Engineer recruiter at Facebook has revealed what goes on in her brain in the first 25 seconds with a new CV.
Ambra Benjamin recruits engineers for Facebook, but she has also worked in recruitment at LivingSocial, Google and Expedia.
She was asked on the question-and-answer website Quora: “What do recruiters look for in a resume at first glance?”
This is where a recruiter’s eye goes first:
The first thing Ms Benjamin does is to evaluate if your recent experience is relevant to the position for which she is hiring. However she also wants to understand the reasons why you are looking for a job in the first place.
“If it’s an incoming resume, I’m wondering why the candidate is looking now. Are they laid off? Did they get fired? Have they only been in their role for a few months and they’re possibly hating it? But most importantly, is their most recent experience relevant to the position for which I’m hiring?” she said.
As recruiters have generally been doing this job for a while, they notice patterns and trends among candidates from certain companies and they formulate assumptions as a result, according to Ms Benjamin.
“It’s not even that I think certain companies are better than others (although some most certainly are). It’s purely a matter of how quickly can I assign a frame of reference. This is also known as ‘credibility.’ Oh you worked at Amazon? Then you’re probably accustomed to working on projects at scale. You’re at a well-known crash-and-burn start-up? You have probably worn many hats and have been running at a sprinter’s pace,” she said.
If she doesn’t recognise a company, she will read the resume in more depth. However if it is poorly formatted or contains spelling errors, you might already have lost her interest
“Is there a career progression? Does the person have increasing levels of responsibility? Do the titles make sense? (You’re a VP of Marketing for a five-person company? Heck, I would be too.) Do the responsibilities listed therein match what I’m looking for?” – are the questions your resume will have to answer for you, according to Ambra Benjamin.
Make sure your resume contains the keywords that illustrate your experience
“Does the person have the specific experience for the role I’m hiring for? There have been times when I command +F the crap out of resumes. Especially the long ones that are hard to follow. Throughout my career supporting hiring for different profiles, I’ve done this on many occasions searching for things like Ruby on Rails, Mule, Javascript, and seriously, anything you can think of,” the recruiter said.
Be creatively honest about your gaps, according to Ambra Benjamin they are not a problem as long as they are explained:
“Oh you took three years off to raise your children? Fine by me, and might I add: #respect. You tried your hand at starting your own company and failed miserably? Very impressive! Gap sufficiently explained. Whatever it is, just say it. It’s the absence of an explanation that makes me wonder,” she said.
Although this is not required if you have included it in resume, the recruiter is going to look at it, according to Ambra Benjamin.
“Two out of three times, I almost always click through to a candidate’s website or Twitter account. It’s one of my favorite parts of recruiting. You never know what you’re gonna get,” she said.
Location and eligibility to work in the country you applying to work in are important facts to mention. According to Ambra Benjamin these facts are not going to make you fail or pass the application but they are important for her to figure out your story.
This includes spelling, grammar, ease of use, ability to clearly present ideas.
“ If you’re in marketing and you’ve lost me in the first three bullets, I have concerns,” she said.
Things I rarely pay as much attention to:
Ms Benjamin confesses that she could go a month without reviewing that section even once. Unless you are a new graduate “experience is king”.
However there are a few exceptions:
“I can think of a few exceptions where perhaps a hiring manager wanted a certain pedigree (Wharton or HBS MBA, for example), but even that’s being de-prioritized more and more. I will also add that this changes drastically by industry and company,” Ms Benjamin said.
“There are exceptions here. I say this with the caveat that I LOVE a creatively formatted resume. However, no amount of fancy formatting is going to make up for a lack of experience,” Ms Benjamin said.
This might vary from country to country, but in the US employers are trying to avoid any kind of discrimination. Things like citizenship, family status, pictures would make a recruiter uncomfortable according to Ms Benjamin.
“We just want to know about things that pertain to your work history. So please take your photo off your resume,” she said.
“There is a debate on this, but I’m sorry, I don’t read cover letters. I want to see the resume. Most of my recruiting colleagues agree, but I know there are still recruiters that do love and value cover letters. I’m of the mind that most companies that request cover letters only do so to weed out the people who haven’t bothered to read the directions,” Ambra Benjamin said.
Things I wish more people would do:
According to Benjamin it’s important to keep the work experience details as professional as possible, but there are ways ti have with it “We recruiters are staring at these missives all day long. Throw a joke in there somewhere for goodness’ sake.”
“I get it. We’ve overshared our way to a more private society, but if you’re looking to stand out, write some stuff on the Internet. Contribute to open-source repositories. Demonstrate some level of domain expertise/interest outside of your 9-5,” Benjamin said.
“What kind of stuff are you working on in your free time?” is a question Ambra Benjamin often asks to her candidates
Things I wish people would stop doing:
“ Especially that one with the double horizontal lines above and beneath the candidate name,” Ambra Benjamin said.
“Exceptions for people who do it cleverly. If no one has ever told you you’re clever, then you’re probably not that clever. Don’t do it,” Ms Benjamin said.
“Unless you are a tenured college professor noble laureate with multiple published works, you do not need an 8+ page resume. That is not impressive; that is obnoxious,” Ms Benjamin said.
Pick a voice, pick a tense, and then stick with it. According to Ms Benjamin it is best to use third person and past tense.
Surprisingly, for Ms Benjamin this would be an immediate disqualification.
“Look, I get it. People are trying to stand out. But in 2015, HR professionals are swamped, anxious, and jumpy. When a random stranger shows up unannounced asking to speak to someone in HR or recruiting, we’re wondering if you have a gun and a vendetta, and we’ve probably alerted security. It’s really creepy,” she said.
Sending resumes addressed to the CEO that end up on some random recruiter’s desk unopened. “This is a gross generalization here and exceptions are made for smaller companies, but um, CEOs don’t often read resumes. We sometimes laugh at people who do this,”Ambra Benjamin said
“The truth comes out,” the recruiter said.
