Submitting a resume to a large company can be pretty bleak. Whether it’s uploading a PDF to an infinite online resource management system or putting a physical copy into the hands of a recruiter along with a million others, it feels a lot like throwing your soul into the abyss and just hoping it will crash into someone who thinks you’re mildly interesting. In other words, it feels a lot like Tinder.
Fear not, my friends: All hope is not lost. Before coming on board at WayUp, I was a Business Analyst at Deloitte Consulting LLP, and one of my favorite non-client activities was going back to my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, during what we referred to as our On-Campus Recruiting (OCR) season. Watching juniors and seniors run around in suits and remembering how stressed out I was trying to find an internship and then a full-time job, I realized that the grass is, in fact, greener on the other side. So now I’m here with all of my not-so-worldly perspective to clear up the fog on who is (probably) reading your application and how to impress them enough to get to the interview!
Campus Recruiter
Human Resources at a large firm is essentially a separate HR company within a larger firm. Actually, in Deloitte’s case, HR is part of a larger distinct legal entity for support services. There is going to be someone, or a team of people, whose entire job is to recruit college students at your school or in your region. They are SO helpful, generally more responsive than any practitioner you may have met at an information session, and also just obsessed with finding the best people for that company. They are there to make your life easier. Do not blow them off because some elitist part of your mind thinks they are “just HR.” I have seen this happen. I have made sure that everyone who saw that person’s application knew that person was super rude. I never saw those individuals get an interview after that.
Recent Graduates
Your RA from your freshman hall that works at your dream company? She’s reviewing your resume. That guy on your Marketing 101 team who you totally saved during the Q&A portion of your semester-end presentation? He’s reviewing your resume. That girl you DFMO’ed at a sorority crush party and then totally forgot her name? Hope she forgot yours too!!! She’s reviewing your resume.
Large firms know that a 2.8 in one major can mean a 3.4 in another and that being president of one huge club on campus is way more legit than founding an organization that never did anything. There’s no way to set a uniform standard across schools, so recruiting teams leave it up to recent graduates as their first line of defense to sift through resumes and filter out the bullsh*t. If you know someone at that company who recently graduated and who has a good impression of you, definitely reach out to them and ask them to consider pulling your resume.
If you haven’t worked with that person or if you’re applying to a billion companies, don’t take it personally if they don’t agree to back your application; on their side, it’s a risk to recommend someone who doesn’t end up working out or worse, who gets the job but doesn’t take it. They’re not about to put their reputation on the line if they don’t know you or if their company is not your #1 choice. You also don’t want to end up giving that person a metaphorical slap in the face if you don’t end up going with their company after they stuck their neck out for you.
As an alternative, you can ask them to review your resume before you submit it. A friend of a friend of a friend of mine heard that I worked in Human Capital at Deloitte, her dream job and company, and reached out to me to ask if I could review it. I was happy to provide her with a critique of her resume and a list of jargon that I knew consultants would be receptive to. She didn’t end up getting the job, but she did get the first round interview!
The Big Deals
For the most part, the resume review stage before interviews is usually settled between the campus recruiter and recent graduates. However, in some cases, particularly if the position is very specialized, the resume review team will include more senior practitioners who are looking for a particular set of skills. At this point, it’s not only about what you know but how well you can convey what you know.
For this audience, don’t be afraid to get technical. The “myth” that employers spend an average of 6 seconds looking at a resume is actually not a myth, but if a Human Capital Senior Manager is looking through your resume (which, by the way, is happening on the Amtrak or in the fifteen minutes between client meetings) and sees “supported transition of 400 users from multiple Enterprise Management Systems (EMS) to Workday,” your resume will be far more likely to shine than if you had written “taught HR team new system for keeping track of employees.”
Senior practitioners have a lot going on when they’re reviewing your resume, and their heads are filled with particular words and phrases. If you can hit on a couple of those phrases in your resume or cover letter, you’ll (a) catch their attention and (b) subconsciously assure them that you already speak their language. Supplement with real hard numbers (400, not four hundred) and those 6 seconds just got a lot longer because you’ll come up in future conversations.
That’s about it! The process gets a bit more involved when it comes to interviews, but if you can get past the resume review, you’ve already beat out a huge percentage of your competition. Keep your eyes peeled for next steps!
