For two decades I was Director of Computer Operations and Technical Services at Trader Joe’s, a sixteen billion dollar company with 38,000 employees across 400+ stores. I hired people. I fired people. I sat across the table and decided, in the first thirty seconds, whether a resume was worth any more of my time. I know what hiring managers are thinking during a job search because I was one for twenty years. And then in 2013 I left, and had to rebuild a professional identity from scratch at an age when most people assume the hard part is behind them. The book I wrote about it opens by welcoming the reader to the worst club they never wanted to join. That’s the correct tone. You got fired, or laid off, or furloughed, and it’s just become clear that it’s permanent.
How long does a recruiter spend on a resume?
A decision about whether to keep reading, and that’s all it is.
People hear thirty seconds and assume it means someone makes the whole hiring decision instantly and unfairly. It’s a sorting decision, and somebody with a stack of applications and a job that’s mostly other things makes it. The question they’re answering is does this document give me a reason to spend five more minutes.
Most don’t, because the document is written to survive instead of to interest anybody. A summary that would fit any candidate in the field. Responsibilities instead of results. Three pages of duties with no indication of what changed because this person was there.
The reader is looking for a reason to stop. That sounds harsh and it’s simply what happens when a posting draws four hundred replies.
What made me keep reading?
Something specific in the first few lines that I couldn’t have guessed.
A number. A system named. A problem described in terms that showed the person understood it instead of had been near it. Anything at all that could only have come from having done the work.
The candidates who did this well weren’t better writers. They’d simply worked out that the reader has no context and no patience, and that the burden of being interesting is entirely on the document.
Why does applying online work so badly?
Because it puts you in the pile, and the pile is the worst place to be. I filled positions from the pile when I had to. I filled them faster and more happily when somebody I trusted said, you should talk to this person. That was risk reduction on a decision I’d be accountable for, and every hiring manager does the same thing.
Which means the search is mostly conversations instead of documents. The resume matters once somebody has a reason to look at it. Giving them that reason is the work, and most people leave it until after they’ve spent three weeks on formatting. My best hires came when I barely read the resume at all. I gave it a quick glance, saw the basic stuff was there, and went straight to talking with the person.
What did leaving in 2013 teach me?
That knowing all of this from the hiring side doesn’t make it easy from the other one. I’d spent twenty years being the person other people were trying to reach. When I left, I had to rebuild a professional identity from nothing, and the things I’d relied on for two decades were all attached to the role instead of to me. The title had been doing work I hadn’t noticed it doing.
That’s the situation most people are in after a job ends, and the shock is that the answer to what do you do stopped being available, and a surprising amount was resting on it.
What should you do in the first week?
Handle the money and the paperwork first, because they have deadlines and the emotional part doesn’t.
Then start talking to people before you start polishing anything. The instinct is to disappear until the resume is perfect and the story is sorted, and that instinct costs weeks. Nobody you know needs the resume to be finished before they can tell you who’s hiring.
The order people usually choose is the reverse of the order that works. Perfect the document, then apply into the pile, then eventually and reluctantly start telling people. Turning that round is most of the improvement available.
Does being let go hurt your chances?
Less than the fear suggests, and I say that as somebody who did the letting go. Layoffs are ordinary. Nobody I ever interviewed lost a chance because a role had been eliminated. Two things did cause damage. An unexplained gap, because it invites the reader to invent the reason. And visible anger about the previous employer, because whatever the merits, the interviewer is imagining you discussing them the same way in a year. The fix for both is a plain sentence. The role was eliminated in a restructure, here’s what I’ve been doing since. Delivered without heat, it ends the topic in about ten seconds.
How do you write a resume that survives a thirty second scan?
Write for a reader with thirty seconds and no context. Put the most specific thing you’ve done in the first three lines.
Results instead of responsibilities. What was different because you were there.
Spend your effort on conversations. The document only matters once somebody is already interested.
Say the gap out loud before anyone asks. One sentence, no heat.
Don’t wait until you feel ready. The people who take three weeks to compose themselves lose three weeks and don’t feel any readier at the end of it.
The strange part of writing this book was recognizing myself on both sides of it. I spent twenty years being the person with the stack of resumes and thirty seconds, and then one year being the person whose document was in somebody else’s stack. The second taught me more about the first than the first ever did.
The book on this: Suddenly Unemployed is 21 chapters on the first weeks after a job ends, written from the side of the table that does the hiring and the firing.
