Ahhhh… there is nothing like the warm smell of fresh 32 lb linen paper. Or the authoritative crispness of Crane’s 24 lb 100% cotton bond – so authentic that it feels like paper currency.
For those of you readers in the know, you’ll recognize these as a couple of the best resume papers money could buy. Back in the day, you’d print your resume on one of these papers, enclose your cover letter and send them together in a matching envelope to the recruiter or the personnel office. Those were the days.
Now, most folks save their resume into PDF format and email it to the recruiter, or upload it to a job site or a corporate career website.
Back in the day, presentation mattered – hence the fancy stationery. Today, speed seems to have greater importance than substance, so the PDF format has become the oft-used approach.
But, the $64,000 question is: how does the hiring manager or recruiter actually read your resume?
“I print the candidate’s resume, fold it in half like a newspaper and read the top half. Then, I skip to the back and review their education and degrees they’ve earned. That method gives me a very concise snapshot of who they are and how they could potentially add value,” says Abbas Shah, a hiring manager and recognized Macro trading expert who earned his reputation of integrity at Lehman Bros., Deutsche Bank, UBS, Moore Capital, Interpacific Capital Management and other prominent financial institutions.
Abbas is not alone. Of all the recruiters, hiring managers, private equity partners and venture capital partners I interviewed, most reviewed resumes pretty much the same way. One of these hiring authorities explained: “We refer to the top half of the first page of a resume as ‘above the fold’. That’s an old newspaper term referring to how newspapers are sold in newsracks on street corners. The newspapers are folded in half in order to fit inside the newsrack.”
“The newspaper editors put their most important news ‘above the fold’ because that is what a passer-by will see when they look into the newsrack. The idea is that if the editors do a good job, the ‘above the fold’ news will be interesting enough to cause passers-by to purchase a copy of the paper from the newsrack. So when we’re reading a resume that way, we’re essentially assuming that the candidate has put their most salient and compelling experiences ‘above the fold’.”
Gee, that’s really interesting. Who would have known that resume reading habits were driven by something as esoteric and ubiquitous as newspapers in newsracks?
Hm. Learn something new every day.
For those of you readers in the know, you’ll recognize these as a couple of the best resume papers money could buy. Back in the day, you’d print your resume on one of these papers, enclose your cover letter and send them together in a matching envelope to the recruiter or the personnel office. Those were the days.
Now, most folks save their resume into PDF format and email it to the recruiter, or upload it to a job site or a corporate career website.
Back in the day, presentation mattered – hence the fancy stationery. Today, speed seems to have greater importance than substance, so the PDF format has become the oft-used approach.
But, the $64,000 question is: how does the hiring manager or recruiter actually read your resume?
“I print the candidate’s resume, fold it in half like a newspaper and read the top half. Then, I skip to the back and review their education and degrees they’ve earned. That method gives me a very concise snapshot of who they are and how they could potentially add value,” says Abbas Shah, a hiring manager and recognized Macro trading expert who earned his reputation of integrity at Lehman Bros., Deutsche Bank, UBS, Moore Capital, Interpacific Capital Management and other prominent financial institutions.
Abbas is not alone. Of all the recruiters, hiring managers, private equity partners and venture capital partners I interviewed, most reviewed resumes pretty much the same way. One of these hiring authorities explained: “We refer to the top half of the first page of a resume as ‘above the fold’. That’s an old newspaper term referring to how newspapers are sold in newsracks on street corners. The newspapers are folded in half in order to fit inside the newsrack.”
“The newspaper editors put their most important news ‘above the fold’ because that is what a passer-by will see when they look into the newsrack. The idea is that if the editors do a good job, the ‘above the fold’ news will be interesting enough to cause passers-by to purchase a copy of the paper from the newsrack. So when we’re reading a resume that way, we’re essentially assuming that the candidate has put their most salient and compelling experiences ‘above the fold’.”
Gee, that’s really interesting. Who would have known that resume reading habits were driven by something as esoteric and ubiquitous as newspapers in newsracks?
Hm. Learn something new every day.