There's a disconnect between employers and the unemployed. While the unemployment rate
stands at 8.2 percent, employers -- and small businesses in particular -- still have unfilled job openings because they say they cannot find people with the right skills to fill those open positions. As a result, job seekers have an overall negative attitude: a recent study by TalentDrive revealed 71 percent of job seekers were pessimistic about their career search, feeling they possessed the required skill set but were not getting hired.
With so many job seekers telling stories of sending out dozens (if not hundreds) of applications
and getting no response, the RezScore team and I felt that this disconnect could be solved by building an algorithm that mimicked a hiring manager or recruiter's review of a resume. Our proprietary algorithms read through a person's resume and analyze it on over a dozen metrics according to the recommendations of hiring managers, HR directors, job search experts, and certified resume writers. The job seeker's resume is then given a letter grade based on how it measures up. Our findings clearly demonstrate that there is an objective standard for "good" and "bad" resume writing.
Definitively knowing what does and does not work on a resume will help thousands of people
get interviews they would not have otherwise gotten. We hope to increase job interviews and
decrease time to hire for at least one million job seekers, and we've already helped thousands
of people improve their resumes from C's or worse to B+'s or better.
One of our users recently shared with us that they have been unemployed since last October
and had been sending out 10 resumes per day, five days a week, with little response. After
grading their resume with RezScore and receiving a C-, and working it up to an A, they have
been averaging two interviews a week. And the great news is that after more than 10 months of
being unemployed, they recently accepted a job in their field.
Another job seeker, John Cement, told us how he had applied to the same company using his
old resume three times over the course of a year, without any response, but got a call back
within a week of improving his resume on RezScore and resubmitting it.
Nearly 500,000 job seekers have used RezScore to date, and more than 100,000 people have
uploaded more than once, with approximately 70,000 able to improve their resume at least
one full letter grade by using our free advice. We also have three times the national average
of job seekers applying to jobs we match them with versus applying to job postings they found
themselves. Increased accuracy in job matching has brought increased interviews and job
offers.
The disconnect in the hiring process begins with resumes, and when a job seeker is unaware
that their resume requires improvement, the time spent searching for a new job is bound to
increase. If a job seeker's resume does not clearly convey their skills and qualifications to a
potential employer, they won't receive an interview, let alone a job offer -- and employers will be forced to continue looking for the right fit.