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The Recruitment People Podcast is a groundbreaking series that delves deep into the heart of the recruitment industry, offering a wealth of insights for both employers and candidates alike. The podcast is a definitive guide through the world of recruitment, where industry experts and visionaries share their knowledge and experiences. In each episode, listeners will uncover the journey and principles behind The Recruitment People agency, led by the trailblazer Kelly Charity. From Kelly's inspiring recruitment journey to the challenges and successes in the industry, this podcast provides a platform for candid conversations, client-centric approaches, and a laser focus on matching candidates with the right opportunities. Join us on this enlightening journey to discover the keys to successful recruitment and how the right partnerships can transform businesses and careers. Subscribe now for a dose of recruitment wisdom and stay tuned for future episodes filled with valuable insights and stories from the forefront of the recruitment world.
Welcome to the Recruitment People podcast, the place where employers and candidates unite to uncover the art of successful recruitment. Hi, I'm Kelly Charity, a recruiter and agency owner with over two decades of recruitment experience. In this podcast series, I'm going to dive deep into the heart of hiring and job seeking, sharing actionable insights, expert advice, and of course, a little bit of fun along the way.
Whether you're looking to sharpen your hiring practices or navigate your career path, we've got you covered. So let's get started and unlock the secrets to recruitment success together.
Hello, listeners. Today on the Recruitment People podcast, we're addressing a common frustration that happens to, well, a lot of job seekers somewhere along the line, and that's Not getting interviews.
I'm getting my resume out there, but I'm not getting that call to say, yes, we'd like to interview you. So look, my name is Adam Bell. And again, I'm here with Kelly charity from the recruitment people who's going to help us understand what might be going wrong and how to improve your job application process so that it isn't another rejection email.
It isn't no, you don't hear anything. It's actually. Hang on. We'd like to, we'd like you to come in. Welcome to the recruitment people podcast, Kelly. good morning! Okay, so obviously resume is, it's your advertisement, isn't it? It's trying to entice your prospective employer to have a chat with you. So obviously it's a crucial element in the process.
Where do people tend to go wrong?
So many things, , where, where do we start? Oh, where do we start? Where do we start? You would've seen it all in your time, I imagine. Absolutely. Absolutely. You need to apply for relevant jobs that match your skillset. If you are applying for a job that doesn't match your skillset, you need to make sure that your resume matches the job description or the advertisement to show that you have the skills to match that job.
Sure.
But even the smallest things like, old contact information. You're applying for a job on the Gold Coast, your address is Melbourne. Hello?
Don't want to leave them with any questions straight from it because they're not going to do that, are they? If you're getting 55 resumes, You're not going to think, why are you in applying?
I need to know. If I want you in, I'd need to know that. I can't be bothered. I've got 45 other resumes to look at.
Correct. And most people would explain with a cover letter if there's something. Like career change or, you know, there's a cover letter that would come with that. You know, talking of cover letters, a lot of people have cover letters that are completely irrelevant.
And the objective on their resume doesn't align with the job that they're applying for. So, you make a snap decision to say, well, obviously they're applying for everything and anything because they've applied for this role. And it, your objective says, I'm looking for a part time role that fits around my family.
the roles full time.
Right.
So there are no.
Yep. They're looking, again, let's use this 55 resumes thing, which is quite common, isn't it? For, you know, sought after roles. You're looking for reasons to, to sift them out to start with. So you
have to get it right.
Red cross, red cross, red cross, and you're gone.
So yeah, you've got to get this right. But let me wind back to cover letters for a second here. So what you're saying really, because cover letters aren't that common anymore, that they're not necessarily asked for, rarely asked for. Is that right?
Certain jobs, government jobs, I think still tend to ask for cover letter explaining, you know, the bullet points to why you meet certain people.
The brief, et cetera, but most employers, don't ask and,
and you wouldn't as a recruiter. So what you're saying is if you've got, if there's something you want the employer or the recruiter to know, isn't generally covered, like you're wanting to change from something you've got transferred, that's when you would put one, even though you're not asked for it and very important because if they look at your resume and it doesn't quite fit.
You're
explaining why. You're
explaining why. That is, that tip is worth its weight in gold. If you get nothing else out of this podcast, because Explain
why you're applying if you don't match the brief. If, you know, if you're a paralegal and you're applying for a paralegal role. You don't need to.
That makes sense, as to why, but if you're, you know, changing career, you probably need to cover letter because you need to explain why you're applying for this role. I always, if somebody's a bit, I go, why did you apply? I would then expect to see a cover letter attached to that application because they're going to explain why.
So if there's not a cover letter, I'm, this is so random. You know, maybe they've missed that they were a paralegal in the past life or, you know, like where is the synergy to this role that they've applied for? There isn't one. So no.
Well, even going back to your first example there, even just a very short cover letter to say, I'm in Melbourne, I'm moving to the Gold Coast on the 1st of August.
And I see this role doesn't start until such and such because they wouldn't have an address to put on there. Explain why.
And lots of people don't even put an address on there. So then when you call the candidate They go, Oh, no, that's too far. Well, if you put your town, I mean, you know, people confidentiality, those sorts of things now, that's fine.
I understand, but they can put the town or I live in, you know, Rabena or I live in Sydney, CBD or wherever they might live. At least you've got an idea of location. So that you go, Oh, it's like, that's miles away from where the job is. The job is South, Southern Gold Coast or Southern Brisbane.
That's like 50 minutes, you know? So yeah, it can just depend. But, and then you've got spelling mistakes. You know, if you're going for a job with high attention to detail, you can't get your resume right. You know, you're not under pressure to send a resume. You can make sure your resume is correct.
A job where there's formatting, involved in the format of your resume is all over the place, bullet points aren't aligned, it's just messy, you know, you really don't have the, it doesn't take much time to apply for the job.
Sure.
And also if you get a resume that's like 10 pages long, I'm like, it's too long, I don't have time to look at 10 pages.
You know, let's just keep it to the relevant job that you're applying for and make sure you demonstrate your experience relative to that job in a very quick space of time. So I don't want to have to scroll through 10 pages to see that you did this job 10 years ago.
Yep.
You know, and now you want to go back into that, if that makes sense.
Sure. So the reason people are not getting interviews, it comes down to one, isn't it? There's something going on with your resume. Okay. Bye. Or, as we just touched on, you need a cover letter to explain, to link the job you're going for to that. So, are you telling me that candidates should and almost must be changing their resume to suit the job they're going for?
Definitely. Definitely, I would recommend that every time, to look at the job advert, look at what are the requirements. You need three years, you know, as an accountant, you need to have worked in manufacturing for two years, etc. If your resume doesn't demonstrate what is being asked in the job description, Or advert is what you've got at this point in time, then you're probably not going to get through to the interview.
And if you don't match, so you're making a career transition, maybe make a call or have a cover letter to say, this is why I think I would match this brief. So you're explaining why there's a bit of a, you know, a gap or a, yeah. Um, and the other thing to explain is, If you've got gaps in employment, you need to explain those gaps because, you may have been unwell or you may have been a carer or whatever the reason might be, but if you don't explain the gaps in your employment, it looks like you're a job hopper, you know, which isn't
seen as a great thing.
Correct.
COVID has seen people, in a job for a year, then they go into another job for a year. Then, you know, this, things have changed in the last four years. And so there is this sort of bit of a, you know, mix up in people's resumes. And so you, it looks like they're a job hopper and actually they've been made redundant four times.
Because of the circumstances of life. Correct.
Yeah. So if you don't explain that, people are going to make a judgment call on that. So it's better to have too much information. Please don't make your resume 10 pages long, but you know, to just explain a couple of the things, you need to look at your resume and go, what would I think if I was an employer when I saw this resume?
Yeah. What does it say about me? You know, to align with the role, et cetera.
There's things, isn't there? And I mean, I'm thinking back now to my resume at different times and wondered whether things were right, but things like writing after each job reason for leaving.
Yeah. Yeah. Good thing to do. Yep.
Yep.
Cause that then it does explain, doesn't it? If it was COVID made redundant due to COVID and lockdown, you know, if you're in Melbourne, you know. Yeah. Everyone's probably got a gap for about two years,
but if you, if you, if
you move to the gold coast, as a lot of Melbourne people have, and we don't like you might be going to an, a Melbourne employer and they instantly see that and go, well, that was, none of us did anything up here.
We didn't, we don't.
Correct. Yeah. So you
need to put those things on there. Don't you? You do.
You do. And achievements. You know, a lot of people, list the tasks. Yeah. Yeah. That they've done in a role. So, you know, employer one is, you know, I did cash handling, you know, sales. Um, Admin, office duties and then, you know, they basically copy and pasted the same bullet points for job 2 and the same for job 3.
What else? What else can you tell me about you? What did you achieve in that role? Yeah. You know, you might have been involved in a project, you might have implemented a system, you might have been involved in upgrading the system. All you're saying is, you know, these are the tasks I did, but what did you achieve?
You know, give us something else to go on. Measurables are good, aren't they? Things that are
measurable that I was able to, I did this task and that led to this increase or this level of productivity raising, sales went up. Two and a half percent. Correct. Measurables. Yeah, let's give
some achievements, not just a list of, you know, tasks that I completed, responsibilities.
Yes, they're important, but some achievements in there would be great too.
Sure.
To sell, a bit of a brag moment. Sure. So let's
talk about someone who's listing their, They're in this situation we're talking about, they've sent out their resume to 30 different jobs over the last month and a half, two months and they haven't got one call.
What would be the first bit of advice that you'd give them?
I would say look at your resume and look at the job you've applied for. Look at the responsibilities. Do they align with your resume? Something's not aligning or you're applying for the wrong jobs or, the other thing to think about is, as a, you know, as a, as an employee, is that when you're applying for a job, we have applicant tracking systems.
Artificial intelligence. And so they will rank the candidate resumes in order of match,
right?
In terms of what they think is the right match to this job. So they're looking at your resume.
This is something people probably don't know that there's software that does this.
Software looks at the resume and looks at your,
advert and we'll make a match and so we get ranked, you know, the candidates get ranked and so we're looking at, not the first applicant, we're looking at the highest ranking candidate to see how they match. And so If you've got 200 resumes for a job and the last job we had, which was a general manager, we had 400 applicants for, I mean, that's an insane amount of people, 400 resumes to go through is just ridiculous.
You need
something to get rid of more than three quarters before you even open one up, don't you?
And so the tracking system will look out keywords. So for example, you know, if you need to have zero, Profit and loss reporting, balance, budget, you know, manufacturing, whatever it might look like. The applicant tracking system is going to squeeze out the people that don't have those keywords in there immediately because it's ranking on your suitability.
So it's looking for key things. So if you know, if the job advert says you need to have P and L budgets,
these words need to
be in That's
probably again, something people don't. Yeah. And I gather with AI that these systems are going to get even better.
Absolutely. Absolutely. They will get smarter. But what I will say on the AI stuff is that actually a recruiter I know ran a survey on LinkedIn about two weeks ago, and he actually asked people in recruitment and employers, when you have an applicant tracking system and you get your resumes come through, yes, they're, you know, rated fine, but do you still look and review?
Every single application regardless of what the applicant tracking? The answer would be
no, wouldn't it?
I think I answered and I said, yes, I do.
So you look at the ones that knocks out. You do. I do. Yeah. Why?
Because people don't put the keywords in there. Oh, okay.
So you know, you could find The gold.
Yes. Because they haven't done what we're telling them to do in this episode. Absolutely,
absolutely. Wow. So going against what I've just said, you may get the opportunity anyway, but I'm being paid. To
get
the best person. Now if you're applying direct to the employer and they get 400 resumes, I'm pretty sure they're going to use their applicant tracking system to wheedle out the people that don't have the key, you know, key phrases.
But I'm being paid to do that. So you're just using
the software to give you a guide.
That's a guide for me as a recruiter, yeah. So
did you do that with 400 resumes? Really? Wow. Yeah,
because you just don't know who you're going to miss, for me as a recruiter, you know.
And again, you've got other jobs too, don't you?
I'm contradicting myself. No, you are. Because I'm
telling the candidate they have to do this, but How many candidates are going through a recruiter as opposed to applying direct to an employer? And so could be missing the opportunity to get in on the interview because they're not putting the things in,
you know, but you don't want to miss them.
I'm not, I don't want to miss them, but if they don't have the keywords in there, they need something else that's going to pull out to me. Yeah, I'm looking for something. Whereas the system is trying to make it streamlined, you know, just pull out the best 10 people. But you know, if time isn't on your side, you are going to speak with the people first that match the brief.
Absolutely. Highly match the brief. You know, they're the people at the top of the tree. So then you start going through it a little bit later. So let's, I mean, to
put this into perspective, if I'm getting it right, the applicant matching system, you're going to look very closely at all the ones that are 10s and 9s.
Absolutely.
It's gonna be a bit of luck if they find you. If you are a two or three you for most, you're not gonna get found 'cause they're not even looking. Yeah. But you, even with you, it's gonna be a bit of luck because you're flicking through those last ones you flick who are two or threes you. Yeah.
'cause you've already got
your top, you know, as much as we
saying that you still look, you've be a 10 or a nine, you be a 10 or a nine. Absolutely. Let me throw a little bit of a, a curve ball at you. And this is just something that's come at me. Go on resume, put your picture r not.
Gosh.
You're thinking if you're good looking. I'm like,
maybe, I, I don't like it. You don't like it? Personally. But
there is no hard and fast rule.
There is no hard and fast rule. And
there, and you're not being crossed off or ticked by doing either one.
No.
No.
I think by putting a photograph on there allows people to make a judgment.
I don't know that can be a good thing. Right. It can be. It can be. But it can also be a bad thing. And I also It's personal preference.
If you feel comfortable, if you like it, great. If you don't.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, it is. It's about how you feel, whether you want to, yeah.
Okay. And in doing this, and this may be a curly question as well, um, Not getting interviews, could it be something to do with your social media?
It could be. There's a whole, situation around, you know, whether people should be looking or not social media, but the fact is it is open. So people can,
whether they're meant to or not, they can.
Absolutely. So you have a social brand and if your brand, Doesn't align, perhaps, with the company culture. It could be. It could be an issue.
Something worth keeping in mind.
Absolutely. And I think, you know, in your resume, and your brand, you know, keep it professional, keep it real and keep it, valid.
So, you know, we get people who, whose objective is, you know, I love spending time with my dog and, I want to work life balance around, you know, Going home and taking my dog for a walk. It's just totally irrelevant. You can write, you like to walk your dog and your hobbies at the bottom, but it's kind of irrelevant.
Yep.
We need to know what's your objective in your career. What is your achievements? What are your skills? And let's go straight into what's your achievements and what, where are you working? What are you doing?
Sure. You
know?
Yep.
So keep it real, keep it up to date. Everything needs to be up to date.
If you haven't worked for four years. You know, you need to explain why. If the last job on your resume is 2020, going, is this resume up to date? What have you been doing? You need a cover letter. You need to explain these things, you know? Yeah. Yeah, you just need to, I think you need as a, as an employer, I'm sorry, an employee looking for a new job, you need to look at your resume and say, what does this say about me?
Yep.
What does somebody read about me? when they look at this.
Yep.
What does somebody feel about when they look at this? You think of it
from their perspective, not yours. Correct.
Correct. And we can look at resumes. We've got resume writing courses to make sure they're right. So if you're not getting an interview, it may be your resume.
I was going to say, you've got a course that helps with this, don't you? And I mean, if I've been getting the key takeaways here is if you're not getting interviews, it is your resume. Yeah. Little chance of anything else. Tailor your resume to each job position you're going for. If there's something you need to explain that as to why it doesn't, can make total sense, put a cover letter.
And if you're still not
getting interviews, come and see you and do your course and,
let's get you in front of people,
get you in front of people. Thanks again, Kelly. This every episode, I really love what we unpack here because it's just so many things that. If you don't know you, you don't
know.
But they are simple things that you can do and it will change, people's, results they're getting. And, you know, essentially we're talking about people's livelihoods and their lives and family happiness and everything here. I'm sure you have found today's episode helpful and, know, that you can implement these strategies, in your next job application.
So look, stay tuned for more valuable insights that keep coming out your way through this, podcast with the recruitment people, Kelly and a team are there to help all candidates, all clients with all manner of things, recruitment and career wise. Thanks once again for coming in and look forward to chatting to you on our next episode.
Thank you.