Modern day Resume Red Flag

Written by Nick Thompson, our VP of Recruiting for hi-tech industries for over 15 years. He has seen hundreds of  thousands of resumes. Here are his thoughts…

Things have changed over the last decade and with the suffocation of social media like Facebook and LinkedIn, companies are becoming savvier and are starting to utilize these sites to contrast and compare with your resume, oftentimes BEFORE they talk to you.

This has more to do with LinkedIn because it is more likely to have a detailed list of your jobs on it, whereas Facebook opens a different can of worms entirely. (We will tackle social media hygiene in general in a future post)  BONUS TIP: Make sure that college photo of you doing a keg stand is marked as private.

We have had companies compare a candidate’s resume to their LinkedIn profile only to express MAJOR reservations when they see omitted or extra jobs than the resume submitted portrays. Gaps in employment histories or completely different jobs listed that do not match can immediately send HR into overdrive; wondering if this person is a liar, hiding a bad work record, firings, or some other nefarious scenario. Not good!

Sometimes extra side hustles are listed, and an employer will wonder if this candidate will have their full attention or be phoning in their day job just to get back to being a wedding photographer.

Even if the discrepancies are easily explained, it just creates that hint of doubt that causes deeper scrutiny throughout the rest of the process. ** The point of the resume is to get the company to want to talk to you further, not inspire them to deep dive cyber stalk you and nitpick why you took three years off to backpack around Europe.

It is a bit of a double-edged sword of how much information to share on LinkedIn. A more detailed bio can lend to being found more easily by employers or recruiters that have an exciting new job opportunity, but also opens you up to more scrutiny if things don’t line up.

NOTE TO SELF: Check your LinkedIn profile and make sure there are not any glaring discrepancies between it and the resume you are submitting. That is all… until next time