They were hungry for work.
One man sent out an embroidered résumé. Another delivered a beautiful box of chocolates with his qualifications listed on the nutrition label.
Do such unorthodox ways to gain attention in today’s brutal job market work?
Yes…and no, said one senior recruiting manager.
“I’m sort of immune to this stuff,” said Bobby Gormsen, senior recruiting manager for online craft marketplace Etsy in a Wall Street Journal interview.
He added, however, that job candidates could gain an edge for being creative, so long as their skill set matches what employers are seeking.
With the job market deteriorating, it’s no wonder job-hunters are turning to desperate tactics.
For every job advertised in 2013, companies received 383 applications on average, according to the CEB (formerly the Corporate Executive Board), the biggest member-based business advisory company (NYSE: CEB) in the world.
The government claims things are getting worse.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the economy added a paltry 113,000 jobs in January 2014. That’s much less than the 185,000 jobs economic forecasters had predicted.
That follows an even worse December, which the Department said only added 75,000 new jobs.
Finding good jobs is getting harder, but Santa Rosa, California-based resume guru Doug Fogel said there are ways for job seekers to gain an edge.
“You don’t have to send in dancing clowns to stand out from the crowd,” he said. “All you have to do is pay attention to some simple things when you write your résumé.”
He suggests placing a testimonial on the top fold of the résumé’s first page.
“You can do that easily if you have a letter of recommendation,” he said. “Just take an excerpt from that letter and highlight it so it stands out from the rest of the copy.”
Doug also recommends to use sub-bullets underneath a few of the main bullets.
“Sub-bullets allow you to expand on your achievements and accomplishments without going into a long block of text,” he said. “That breaks up the copy and makes your résumé much easier to read.”
He also advised paying attention to aesthetics.
“Sometimes a line will run over to the next line by a single word,” he said. “In that case it’s best to rewrite the line so there’s no spillover.
“It’ll make your resume look much cleaner.”
For more information about U.S. labor statistics, visit www.dol.gov.
For more information about resume writer Doug Fogel, visit www.ResumeCoverLetterWriting.com