How Effective is your Resume? Here’s how to measure…

[Phil Rosenberg]

When I’m asked for resume advice, I’ll often first ask…what's your resume’s hit ratio, or response rate? Usually, this question is answered by the sound of crickets.

It surprises me, especially Finance and Technology professionals whose professional lives revolve around measuring and interpreting data, don’t think to measure the effectiveness of their resume. Isn’t it natural to track how well your resume works for you?

At a minimum, couldn’t you easily track how many callbacks, interviews, and offers each version of your resume generates?

An effective resume generates a 25% direct-employer (non-headhunter) response rate. If you’re getting less, than your resume works against you. But most job changers don’t have a clue how to measure this.

There are two alternatives I’d suggest. One is a do it yourself solution, and the other is a web service.

Do it Yourself: Build a spreadsheet to track results. List date sent, company, contact person (if known), source, next follow up, and check boxes for Phone screen, Interview, 2nd Interview, Offer. Include a column for notes.

Keep a running average of (phone screens + interviews)/resumes sent. Make sure not to double count Phone screens and interviews if you have both for the same job. Also, it’s a more effective measurement when you only track direct employers, and leave known outside recruiters out of the equation, as known recruiters give a much higher % of callbacks than direct employers.

Web Service: There’s a great web service called JibberJobber, run by Jason Alba. Jason built JibberJobber as a way to track metrics of his own job search, then started letting others use it. It became so popular, that his promotion through social media caught on and he created a successful web business from the idea.

JibberJobber brings a recruiter’s dashboard to the job seeker. This tool keeps manages job search stats, resume versions, recruiting and job seeking contacts, personal network contacts, and organizes your job search like a CRM organizes a sales forces’ efforts. You can even import networking contacts through social networks like LinkedIN. JibberJobber simplifies your search, can point you in the right direction, keep track of next steps, and best of all, it’s free for a limited version.

Which one to use? It depends on personal preference. While the structured detailed approach of JibberJobber works well for those who are very disciplined, an Excel spreadsheet allows you the free form style of doing it yourself, ability to customize and track the statistics that make the most sense to you, and an unlimited database size for free (JibberJobber charges a small monthly fee once you reach a minimum size).

Either way you prefer, track your resume results. And if your resume isn’t generating a 25% direct employer response rate, talk to professionals to get resume advice.

If you’d like more information, a free 30 minute resume consultation, or some advice about your career transition, just email your resume to reCareered at [e-mail], and we'll schedule a time to talk.

Trackback: http://recareered.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-effective-is-your-resume...

Phil Rosenberg
President, reCareered Email: [e-mail]
Blog: http://reCareered.blogspot.com

[Louisa]

What great advice! I really like what you have to say about tracking how many people have looked at your resume. I work for a staffing company in Boston, Hollister Staffing (www.hollisterstaffing.com) and have never thought of this. People are so quick to blame the poor job market on not getting responses to their resume, but never think that it could be their resume that is the problem. Keeping track of who calls you back, etc on a spreadsheet is such a great idea, and also a great way to visually and concretely see how effective your resume is. Thank you so much for sharing this!

[Gary W Capone]

Phil, good advice. Businesses test their marketing and sales material constantly - and a resume in some respects is an advertisement for a job seeker. Unfortunately, most people don't approach it this way and end up with the same ineffective resume failing to produce results.

[Jacob Share]

I forgot to mention: I Stumbled this for you:
http://jobmob.stumbleupon.com/review/25426010/

[Jacob Share]

Phil, it is truly surprising at how few people consider doing this.

Over on JobMob, Isabella Mori blogged about the same thing in Do You Need Help Writing A Resume? In her case, she estimated a 10% response rate was good enough to show that your resume isn't your biggest obstacle. I agree - although 10% really is borderline - but it depends on how you're sending out resumes and how much targeting you're doing. I tell job seekers that it's better to send out few highly-targeted resumes to blast generic ones.