Executive Summary: BBB Business Career Services Resume Practices Analysis
Prepared by: Bryan Rose
Date: June 26th, 2018
Overview:
BBB Business Career Services (BCS) provides career related guidance and support to over 3,500 business students & alumni every year. Resumes are the cornerstone of student & alumni professional profiles. This report aims to provide resume template recommendations to BCS Staff based on national standards and those utilized by BBB Peer Institutions.
Problem:
The mass adoption of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) by companies over the past 5 years has drastically changed expectations for resumes. Resume paper used to be one of the most important aspects of resumes, now, formatting & content that register with an ATS are the core elements of a great resume. The ever-changing business landscape demands regular review of best practices to ensure students & alumni remain competitive and the recommendations below are necessary to meet those demands.
Solutions & Benefits:
Resumes must be free of acronyms (without writing full words the first time), tables, non-standard bullet points, dates in number format, and unprofessional file names. By avoiding these items, candidates increase their chances to get past an ATS and be reviewed by a human.
Content detailed under experiences should mostly be relevant to the job candidates are applying for. Meaning, candidates shouldn’t just list duties in a role, they should detail the duties, projects, and accomplishments in their previous roles that most relate to the job. This way, candidates are providing keywords & content an ATS will recognize & approve.
Skills sections should utilize a subheading feature that groups overarching skillsets together in order to organize them efficiently for review by an ATS & the human eye. This format provides an alternative to using tables, which an ATS does not register.
When necessary, candidates should utilize an “Other Relevant Experience” section following experience section(s) that are detailed by bullet points. Candidates can solely list the company or organization, their title, and the dates, without bullet points underneath. This allows candidates to still list other experiences an employer may find valuable, but do it in an expedited way.
When utilizing these suggestions, candidates saw an increase of 42% in response rate from employers.
Cost & Risks:
There are currently 11 major specific and two general resume templates. There are also three resume presentations customized for specific populations. Allotting for two hours per item and $XX/hr. in labor costs, updating templates & presentations will cost $XXX.
With resumes being a very subjective matter, there is always a risk that human reviewers will prefer small formatting choices over others, but the outlined solutions are national best practices, so there is confidence that risk assumed by the solutions is minimal.
Timeline:
Updates to templates & presentations will begin immediately upon approval of the detailed plan. The updates will take two weeks to complete following approval.