A recent article entitled HR's Dirty Little Secret Nobody Is Reading Resumes by Dr. John Sullivan, posted in an e-newsletter for executive recruiters, indicates that because of layoffs and hiring freezes many corporate job sites are being inundated with resumes.  Companies like Microsoft, Intel, and Hewlett Packard receive upward of 50,000 resumes per month through their corporate websites.  For many corporate recruiters, the days of relying on paper resumes are over.  Now nearly everyone has access to computers and the Internet.

The process of submitting resumes through corporate websites seems, on the surface, like an excellent one.  From the applicants perspective, job postings are easy to find and submitting is fast and inexpensive.  Corporate sites allow applicants to cut and paste their current resume, saving them a lot of data entry time.  There is no limit to the amount of times that a candidate can submit their resume, so candidates submit multiple versions.  Firms with advanced applicant tracking systems send back automatic e-mails or postcard notices acknowledging receipt of the resume and thanking the applicant for their interest.

It is after the resume is submitted that the pain for the candidate begins.  For the most part, candidates cannot go to the website to track the progress of their resume through the system.  They never get a note saying outright that their résumé will not be considered and why.  Instead, applicants wait with great hope for a follow-up e-mail or call asking them to come in for an interview.  They wait because they assume the process offers them a reasonable chance to get a job and because they rightfully assumed recruiters and managers were reading their resumes.  Unfortunately they often wait and wait and wait!

The problem with this seemingly "perfect system" occurs when you look more closely and discover that the odds of anyone actually reading a given résumé is often little more than zero!  There are several major firms where no none is reviewing resumes from the corporate job site at the current time. The simple fact is that at most corporations no live person actually reads resumes.  Instead they are scanned into or entered directly into the candidate database by the ATS (Advanced Applicant Tracking Systems).  Most systems do nothing with the resumes until they are specifically asked by a recruiter or manager to sift through them for a specific job opening.  Resumes can sit in the database and never be read by a human being.  Only if a recruiter or manager decides to search the database after the hundreds of thousands of resumes are electronically narrowed down to a manageable number (usually less than a hundred) is it possible for someone to actually "read" a candidate's resume.

Few corporations will admit that no one is reading resumes submitted in good faith by applicants.  Even bringing up the topic causes recruiting managers to run the other way.  Any admission that resumes go unread would be a PR nightmare.  From the corporate perspective, no one promised that they would read all resumes.  Candidates "just assume" that there is some reasonable chance of getting a job through the existing corporate job system.

Unfortunately, the actual odds of getting a job through many corporate websites approach winning the lottery.  Some of the reasons for this include:

• Cutbacks in the corporate recruiting function have been so dramatic that either no one is assigned or no one has time to scan more than a small segment of the resumes received each week.

• Recruiters who do search databases generally do it only one day per week - and if a candidate's resume didn't come in that day, it will probably be lost in the volume of thousands of resumes that will arrive before the next search day.

• Resume spamming by applicants has become so common that many recruiters and managers refuse to search the database, since it contains numerous unqualified candidates applying for jobs for which they have no skills.  After being burned a few times, many recruiters and managers stick to referrals, niche job boards, and other tools - they actually abandon searching resumes that come in through the corporate website.

• Applicant tracking systems sort resumes primarily based on the number of keywords in the resume.  If candidates fail to use the right keywords there is no chance their resume will be read by a human being.

• Most corporate hiring has been frozen or so dramatically cutback that those who are searching for resumes only look at the very narrow list of skills required by their currently open jobs.  This leaves most other resumes unread.  Since corporations don't announce hiring freezes on their website, candidates have no way of knowing that when they apply for a job the company has no intention of reading it at that time.

• The volume of resumes received is tremendous.  Major firms receive thousands of resumes on some days.  Since laws require companies to keep resumes of applicants for as long as 2 years, the size of a major company's resume database can easily exceed one million resumes.  Since hiring managers refuse to look at thousands of resumes, recruiters often scan the database only until they find, say, 100 qualified resumes, and then they stop looking.  If resumes are sorted by the level of skills and experience, unless you are "super qualified", the odds of getting your resume read are extremely low.

• If the resume scanning system sorts matches alphabetically, the chances of someone with a name beginning with "S" being found may be miniscule if the recruiter stops after they get their 100 target résumés.  Even if they search some other way, the odds of any individuals résumé being in that 100 selected for further review in a résumé database of 1 million résumés is probably in the single digits.

• Management ranks have been greatly reduced by layoffs and most managers have little or no time to search the database.  As a result, they rely on recruiters to do it for them or they hire external search firms to avoid the issue altogether.

• Some search engines are so complicated that most managers and a large percentage of the recruiters never even learn how to search the database.  And since most training has been limited, there is little chance that will change in the immediate future.

• Corporate recruiters are increasingly educated and often limit searches to passive candidates.  When you submit your résumé through a corporate job site, you automatically become an active candidate and your resume is labeled as having lower value.

• Higher-level executive or technical job seekers who apply for jobs through corporate websites have a zero chance of having their resumes read because most of those jobs are outsourced to executive search firms that have their own databases and sources.  Most executive recruiters do not have permission to search the corporate database.

• The current definition of "applicant" is unclear, but most corporations are afraid that if they "read" a resume the person must automatically be considered as an applicant for EEOC purposes.  As a result, recruiters and managers are reluctant to turn too many résumé into applicants.

This article increases your awareness of the importance of using methods other than posting resumes on corporate websites to secure interviews and jobs.  You need to use the telephone, network with everyone you know, and make repeated follow-up calls.  Patience, persistence, and assertiveness are keys.  Avoid the human resource department when possible and contact the person who would be your manager.  Thousands of resumes may go unread but if you have the gumption to persist and make repeated phone calls, you may have your resume read, get that interview, and find a great job.