Recruiter Brad Remillard on Functional resumes:

I don’t read them. It is obvious when one has a functional resume they are trying to hide something and I’m rarely going to take the time to attempt to figure it out. 1 second.

Remillard was writing in  How Recruiters Read Resumes In 10 Seconds or Less.

His suspicion of functional resumes is well-placed. Like good writing, a good resume or CV is crisp and unambiguous. Functional resumes appear deliberately ambiguous.

Recruiters are brutal when sifting through resumes and CVs. As Brad Remillard explains in  How Recruiters Read Resumes In 10 Seconds or Less it seems disrespectful, but from their point of view it makes sense.

He says his first pass over a pile of resumes is box-checking. He can quickly rules out many candidates in a matter of seconds. Here's an example of how he works:

Industry. If my client is in banking and your background is primarily manufacturing – goodbye.  These two often are so different that the client isn’t open to considering such different industries. This works both ways, if you have a manufacturing background I’m not going to consider someone with banking. 2-3  seconds to determine this.

I've hired many journalists in my time and I usually take a similar approach – at least with the first cut. If I advertise a job and it asks for X,Y and Z, then I toss out all the applications which don't have them.

And because I'm an editor, when I hire journalists I immediately cut applications or CVs with spelling or grammar mistakes. I'm unlikely to keep poorly written ones either.

If you're still sending out a job resume (or CV) with statements of the bleeding obvious then its time to give it a make-over.

In Five Signs Your Resume Is Passe, Devine Caroline suggests avoiding sentences saying, for example, references are available on request.

As she points out, of course they are available, would you refuse to send them if asked?

Overall I agree with four of the five points. I'd take issue with the advice about not squeezing a resume to fit on a single page of paper. While it seems silly, particularly in an era when the resume is going to arrive in an email and not in a letter, to cram many years of experience into 300 words or so, there's a good case to keep things as tight as possible. Devine Caroline does make this point, but I fear some readers may not grasp the importance of brevity.

See: Five Signs Your Resume Is Passe

Punk Rock HR offers an even better piece on creating a modern resume: Fluffy Stuff on Resumes

Lifehacker Australia says some employers worry about hiring overqualified staff. So if you need a job in a hurry  is to send an honest résumé that leaves off your more impressive achievements.

Land Short-Term Work With A Dumbed Down Résumé | Lifehacker Australia.

Many employers are suspicious of unexplained time on a curriculum vitae (CV) or resume. This is a hangover from days past when people didn’t flit from one job to another.

They expect to see a list of previous employers along with starting and finishing dates. Nobody gets excited about a missing week or two, but one or more unexplained periods of longer than about four weeks will ring alarm bells.

We’ll look at how to deal with blanks in a moment. First let’s look at why they make employers nervous.

I once interviewed someone with a six-month blank on his CV. His career looked solid until that point, but the job after the blank was a clear step down from the earlier positions.

There might have been a perfectly reasonable explanation – six months travelling overseas or perhaps a full-time education course not related to career matters. In fact, I discovered the interviewee had been in prison.

CV blanks may be sackings or illness

This is an extreme case. Hopefully it doesn’t apply to you. The other serious negative possibility is a forced break after dismissal.

Sacked people have difficulty finding another job, particularly in a tight-knit industry.

Less negative, but still of concern to potential employer is blank CV spaces due to illness. Companies are unwilling to hire people with medical problems – despite skills shortages.

CV blanks are common

CV blanks are hardly rare for modern knowledge workers. No-one has a job for life and being made redundant is a rite of passage in the tech industry. It can take weeks or months to find a new job after sudden redundancy. What’s more, people  burnt out by struggling companies need a rest between gigs.

Even without redundancy, knowledge workers are prone to CV blanks by the nature of their work. Many move from job to job rarely staying with one company more than two years.

Moving from one company to another is not always smooth; it’s possible to fall between the gaps. I’ve twice started new jobs only to discover within days that I’m in the wrong place. No doubt most readers will have found themselves in a similar position.

Don't forget the children

Women have extra reasons for career gaps: children. And then there are short-term contracts – jobs that only last for a specified period. It isn’t always easy to finesse a smooth transition from one job to the next.

So, we all have blanks, most are reasonable but employers don’t like them. What’s the best strategy?

The first rule is to turn those blanks into meaningful yet honest CV entries.

Leaving unexplained blanks is bad but not being truthful only makes matters worse. Be upfront about any time when you were not in paid work.

If it was only a matter of weeks then be ready to say that you ‘took a holiday’ or ‘needed a rest’ or ‘painted the house’ between jobs. That’s enough explanation. It’s also perfectly OK to tell an employer that you waited for the right opportunity to come along.

If the absence was linked to illness (or childbirth) tell the employer the truth explaining, assuming it’s true, that you are now fully recovered and keen to work to your full potential.

If you spent the time in prison… well that’s a whole different story.

Squawkfox recommends steering away from general terms such as 'responsible for' and being far more specific when writing a job application.

It is good advice and likely to help you stand out if your application letter and resume are read by human beings who care about what they are doing.

As an example, she suggest avoiding the word  successful.

She writes:

Hopefully you only list the successes on your resume.

So if everything is a success, then why write the s-word? Stick to showing your success by giving concrete examples of what you’ve done to be successful!

Let your skills, qualifications, and achievements speak for you.

BAD

• Successfully sold the product.

GOOD

• Increased sales of organic chocolate by 32 percent.

When it comes to your successes, please don’t be shy. Boast your best, sing your praises, and sell your skills.

This contrasts with advice handed out by some outplacement companies at the present.

I'm not sure Squawkfox's approach works so well if you're applying to an organisation using computer technology or low-level juniors to pre-scan large numbers applications: some of the rightly-identified sucky words are likely to be exactly the kind of triggers a computer resume scan or an office junior will be looking for.

On the other hand, speaking for myself, I'd hate to work for an organisation that would treat applicants so inhumanly.

Even at the best of times older knowledge workers struggle to find a decent job. Employers view younger workers as cheaper and, with something still to prove, think they more likely to work hard.

Then there’s the fashionable digital natives idea. It says the people who grew up with the Internet make better use of technology than the generation who designed it.

These ideas are debatable. We’ll leave them for another time. In the meantime older knowledge workers can take these steps to get a new job:

Show where you add value

Employers pay older workers more than youngsters because they have better experience and skills. However, bosses may suspect those youngsters have more of the right kind of skills.

Your mission is to show otherwise. Make sure your CV or resume lists up-to-date skills and shows you understand modern technologies.

For example, if you’re a programmer ditch the references to Cobol in favour of current tools. Demonstrate your practical understanding of Web 2.0 and social media. If you haven’t done so already create a Linkedin profile and point to it from your CV. By all means print copies of your CV if recruiters ask for them, but have electronic versions and embed links to your Linkedin profile and other relevant sites.

It’s too late to start a blog if you’re looking for a job now, but getting one up and running today might help in six months time. Make sure it’s about something useful and doesn’t read like the rantings of a grumpy old man or woman.

Crank up your personal network

Face it. We’re not all born sales critters. If walking into a function and handing out scores of business cards makes you feel like an Amway tout, then don’t do it. People will smell the desperation and unease.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t shake the contact tree. Over the years you will have worked with hundreds of other people who will know your strengths and talents. Some of these will have made through to the higher level. Others will be involved in hiring or can refer your name to people who are hiring. If it helps, don’t view it as networking, think of it as renewing old friendships. Get in touch, find out if they know of openings for your proven skills.

Use professional recruiters

You should at least let the professional recruiters know you are on the market. Many are good at finding work for more experienced and highly skilled people. They can do a good job of selling you to employers and give useful tips once you have an interview set up.

Some employers want grey hair

I was still in my 30s and dark-haired at the peak of the dotcom boom when I picked up a consulting job. At the time the person hiring me said “we need some grey hairs on board”. His rationale was having mature people who understood his business plays well with customers and investors. There are still employers who want mature workers.

Prepare for a long haul

Sorry, there’s no sugar-coating this pill. It takes older workers longer to find new jobs than younger workers. So be ready for the long haul. And remember, it just takes longer that’s not the same as saying it doesn’t happen.

Get started straight away

It takes older workers longer to find a new job so don’t hang around. Get organised the moment you hear talk of redundancies or lay-offs. Do not spend weeks having a well-earned rest, you may get a chance before starting in your new role.

Target employers where the management is older

My teenage daughters think people in their late twenties are ‘old’. People in their 20s and 30s think people in their late 40s are old. Younger managers are far less likely to hire people they consider old. Older managers will understand your worth and will consider your age a good cultural fit.

Is there a difference between a ‘resume’ and a ‘curriculum vitae’? The answer is there may well be an important difference or none – it all depends on who uses the terms.

Employers and recruitment specialists in Australia tend to use the term ‘resume’ when asking candidates to supply a written work history. Like other aspects of modern Australian language use, it follows the American model. Although you’ll find New Zealand and UK employers are starting to use the same term, they still more often ask for a CV or a ‘curriculum vitae’.

While the British and New Zealanders might prefer to use CV, they generally regard the two terms as synonyms.

My Concise Oxford Dictionary defines resume as curriculum vitae. The dictionary suggests the word resume is an Americanism for CV.

Americans often make a clear distinction between the two terms. In their book a resume is a career summary designed to sell your key skills and experiences to a prospective employer while a CV is a fuller record of your work and life history. You can read how one American sees the difference between the two.

By all means read the essay, but I wouldn’t take what the head hunter has to say about European-style CVs too seriously. That’s because British employers prefer short, snappy CVs and they certainly have little relation to whatever it is he is describing in the essay.

For example, when I started hiring people in Britain during the early 1980s people would send CVs on a single piece of A4 paper. Some would make it to a second sheet, but anyone who required more than two sheets of paper would be regarded with suspicion. Admittedly I was hiring journalists and those days word economy was  a virtue. Nevertheless, good British CVs are generally short.

On the other hand, when a recruitment consultant in New Zealand approached me about a particular job she said a two pager is insufficient. She said nothing less than six pages would be adequate.

The simple truth is that there’s confusion about employer expectations of prospective employees. It varies from industry to industry, grade to grade and company to company. Some recruiters ask specifically for a two-page resume, that’s good; many more are vague.

Unless you know what the employer expects my advice is to ask the person handling the recruitment exactly what they expect to see.

That way you do three things. First, you end any ambiguity and can deliver to their exact requirements.

Second, you’ve flagged an interest. You may get to talk more and show something interesting, that way the person at the other end will look out for your application when it arrives.

Third, you’ll be able to figure out some clues about what kind of person or company your dealing with before making any commitment.