Every job seeker and hiring manager has in their mind the perfect resume. It has great formatting, pleasing margins is a proper, scannable length and outlines the skills and history of the candidate. However, some of the tried and true facts of resumes that may not mean what you think they mean.
While resumes are still one of the determining factors in choosing candidates for interviews, there is a great deal of anxiety around them. No group of people is more afraid of their resume than people who have had many job changes. The standard wisdom states that a person with many job changes is unreliable and therefore a bad employee, but is that true?
The myth of the forever employee
As the above article points out, people do not stay in jobs for as long as they once did. Specifically, it notes that by the age of 32, people today have had, on average, twice as many job changes as they had thirty years ago. This means that more and more frequently people are leaving jobs.
That also means, more and more frequently resumes show more mobility between jobs. If that is a factor that a hiring manager looks at as undesirable, hiring managers may soon find themselves facing a serious shortage of “qualified” applicants. The truth is, with the general economic uncertainty over the last decade, the job market has been somewhat tumultuous for the millennial generation and that has lead to some thoroughly “busy” resumes.
Diamonds in the rough
Finding the right person to fill that job has gotten harder, there is no question of that. What good managers and employers need to do is consider how they recognize new applicants. It’s possible that the resumes you’re dismissing because of non-standard work histories come from the perfect person for your position.