Using the Job Description Is Unacceptable
Years of doing the same thing makes you become really efficient at what you do and recruiting is no different. You develop shortcuts and you learn little tricks that ultimately increase your productivity and efficiency, often without knowing it. Additionally, a recruiter also has to use whatever is available to be able to develop the viability of a candidate.
“Perform Other Tasks as Needed”
While it is true that recruiters go by more than just a resume, it is still a key piece of the process. If I am reviewing candidates I see a phrase like these – I cringe immediately. I HATE IT. WITH A PASSION. Why is this so significant? This is verbiage that you typically see in the job description and now it’s being presented to me as someone’s daily responsibilities. Why is that significant? This leads me to believe that this person is at best, just an average candidate. This person highlights that he comes in and fulfills the job at hand and that’s it. Who wants that?
“Create various reports using software”
In addition to it technically being plagiarism, using the job description on your resume also limits your searchability with recruiters. Job descriptions are vague for a reason and without including specifics on your resume, you are not doing yourself any favors. Say I had a client and they are looking for a financial analyst and I know that they use Power BI as a tool. I am going to be looking for resumes with Power BI on the resume and due to the extreme level of competition – you will get overlooked.
“May serve as department point of contact for internal and/or external teams”
These always make me chuckle because I just have to think, “How can one MAY do something, if it happened in the past?” How can you do something OR something else when it was supposed to already have been done. I do realize that I am certainly making some assumptions and I have been wrong before, but hopefully I can get someone to read this at one point and be like “Oh yeah!!!!” and then that will just motivate me to go on rants anymore.
This was fun for me – and if I can vent all the while helping someone then that is a WIN WIN for everyone right?