Ask HN: Hiring managers and recruiters, how much does resume layout matter?

3 points by jaxbot 7 years ago | 4 comments

I work at Big 4 and interview people regularly. I get to see the resumes of people who have passed 'resume round' and are now mostly subject to the feedback of the interviewers.

I'm constantly shocked out how many resumes I see that follow none of the best practices everyone involved in 'resume review' talks about. College students with 2+ page resumes. Poor layout choices. Overall 'unprofessional' (font choice, size, coloring, etc) looking. Lots of extra details about their pet, choir, etc. that we're always told to omit unless we're applying at the student union.

Honestly, none of this bothers me. I firmly care more about their accomplishments and ability to perform in the interview than how their PDF looks. But it surprises me that it doesn't seem to concern the people who review candidates purely on their resume. Given some of these resumes, you'd think it was done entirely by a computer. Is it?

Curious what recruiters and hiring managers think about traditional resume best-practices and how much they care about 'bad looking' resumes.

cimmanom 7 years ago |

IMO, a lot of it is subconscious. A resume that’s well laid out and makes it easy to find the most important points puts me in a much better mood than one where I have to dig through a wall of text to learn anything meaningful about the candidate.

So what’s there and how it’s written is crucial. But presentation helps. It also demonstrates that the candidate is thinking about how they communicate and what points they’re trying to get across to their audience, which IMO is a critical skill.

sebmak 7 years ago |

I agree with cimmanom. Alot of it is definitely subconscious.I would say it doesn't matter, but I can think of many times where I saw a resume and completely dismissed the person because I couldn't quickly understand where the important information was.

When I am reading through hundreds of resumes, I really just want to see the important information about someone's work history quickly to make a decision whether to add them to the pile or not.

vfulco2 7 years ago |

I run a professional services firm in Shanghai for global job seekers. My business is about 60% locals, 40% rest of world. Almost 90% of the resumes I see are horrendous, especially from Chinese applying to MNCs. Typically, they are full of typos, poor grammar and Chinglish (English written with more Chinese grammar traits which makes for bizarre sounding text). Most of these resumes get past the first round since local junior HR staffers have questionable English skills, but they are often rejected wholesale at higher rounds of management with multicultural backgrounds or true polylinguals. As is in the US, candidates never know why they were rejected, which makes finding the motivation for improving these docs on their own tough. I get this perspective secondhand from HR and managers.

croo 7 years ago |

It matters when I can see that the CV made with the bare minimum work required - or even less. If someone cannot read through a blog post about how a CV should look like I always have a fear that this attitude will show on other products they may work on.