Thursday, April 16, 2009

A thousand times I’ll tell you… quit being a roadblock to your own success!

I have heard and seen it asked more times than I can count. I have seen and heard it asked by people looking for jobs, by people writing books, and any where else in the business world where documents are submitted electronically. While it changes slightly, the question is essentially the same.

I’m just curious as to why you, like many recruiters, emphasize a WORD copy of a resume for a position that requires a candidate who is, obviously, heavily into Linux. Like a growing number of Open Source professionals, I don’t use Microsoft products. Can you not make use of a pdf, or text format?

The above is a question asked on linkedin.com for a position for a LAMP engineer/Administrator.

To which there have been several replies…

I’m not sure about this case in particular, but recruiters like to have it in Word format so that they can add their logo/information to your resume. Can’t do that in txt or pdf.

...surely a copy of the resume saved as HTML would work, no? Then it could always be imported into Office or most any other word processing app. Just a thought…

So, here, with all my astuteness, is my response.

A word copy is required for many reasons. First, there has to be a standard. The standard in the business world is Microsoft Word. Second, recruiters live in a business world, not in the world that they are recruiting in. They don’t accept .txt, .html, .pdf, xml or anything else because it is not their job to prepare your marketing documents. It is their job to hook up candidates with clients. Third, they have written their tools and processes to work with the business standard. Recruiters, as a general rule, are not technologists. They are marketers, sales people, and the like.

YOUR job is to make THEIR job as simple as possible. YOUR job is to make THEIR job as efficient as possible. YOUR job is not to be a computer bigot, a computer snob, nor a roadblock to their success nor to your own.

It is not about doing something that could be imported or that “would work”. The more time THEY spend doing YOUR job, the less time THEY get to spend doing THEIR job, which means the LESS money YOU and people like you get to make.

I don’t really mean to come off sounding like a butt. I have heard this question and these types of answers more times than I can count. The business world doesn’t care about what we are using. They care about making money. They care about using the right tool for the job. The right tool (in today’s environment) for submitting an electronic resume is in Microsoft Word format. I am not in any way endorsing Microsoft or their products. However, I am a realist. That being said, I keep my resume available in Word, HTML, and PDF on my web site. The PDF almost never gets looked at (other than by the search engine bots), the html and word ones do.

One more thing, if you believe the format you desire your resume to be in can be imported into office, then great. Save it in whatever format you want, and then import it to office.

Actually, I have a better idea. I think you should leave your resume in pdf or txt or whatever. That way, I have a better chance of getting the job.