I am curious to know what people think about CV / resume file names.
Should you just call your document cv1.doc ? If you are you are probably missing out a chance to stand out from the crown, or at least be found in a large directory full of CVs. By being slightly smarter, a CV called Mike_Wood_CV.doc is far easier for a recruiter to find and although most CVs are imported into the recruiter’s own system, why make it difficult for them?
On another note, what about file types? I would normally recommend saving your CV as a PDF file or a .DOC. Try and avoid using Office 2007′s .DOCX, as not everyone can open them, and again, why make it difficult.
However, these are my thoughts and I’d be interested to know what you think! Let me know.
Mike
This is quite an old report, but I came across it and thought it was worth sharing
New research published today (October09) by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), shows that racial discrimination in recruitment still exists towards ethnic minority people.
The study showed discrimination occurred for those applying for jobs with a name suggesting they were from an ethnic minority, rather than white British. For every nine applications sent by a white applicant, an equally good applicant with an ethnic minority name had to send sixteen to obtain a positive response.
Three applications were sent to 987 advertised job vacancies giving a total of 2,961 applications. Applications were made to private, public and voluntary sector employers of varying sizes.
The public sector vacancies included in this study – which usually required standard application forms, did not discriminate at this initial stage of recruitment. This suggests that discrimination might be reduced by the use of standard application forms.
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/newsroom/press-releases/2009/october-2009/dwp047-09-191009.shtml
There seems to be an increasing amount of talk about diversity recruiting, and not just in pharma. By diversity recruiting I mean ensuring that you recruit a diverse range of candidates within your company. In reality this might mean that you broaden your recruitment net to include sites that, for example are used by minority groups based on race, colour, age, disability, religion. It may even amount to positive discrimination, as the BBC have stated:
“Under such a plan, if two job candidates met the required standards, the candidate whose ethnicity is under-represented in the force would be selected.” (BBC, 19th April 2007)
A few useful diversity recruitment resources:
Some pharma companies are making progress in diversity recruiting by promoting themselves well
What is immediately noticeable however, is the fact that all these diversity job boards are USA based – what is the UK, or indeed the European pharma industry doing about diversity recruitment? - and what strategies are in place?
Are some recruiters pretending to be candidates just to get the inside information on a job or client?
We think they are!
http://www.pharmiweb.com/features/feature.asp?ROW_ID=1249
I’ve just started to test a job posting on Xing. Their site (which is much like LinkedIn) requries that you are a “premium” member before you can advertise jobs. Unsurprisingly, there is a cost for this, but its only a few Euros. Once you are registered you can post your job adverts and set up the budgets. You are charged 49 cents (Euro) per click, but you can cap each advert on clicks. A job is live for 90 days (which might mean a lot of clicks!)
It all seems pretty straight forward, but I’ll do a more comprehensive review once I get some responses to the adverts.
Posting a job on Xing
