I went searching through the internet today and found some fascinating resume facts that I thought I’d share with you, along with some advice on what those facts mean for you.

Fact: Currently, over 90% of resumes are sent by email or posted online.

What It Means to You: Your resume should be in the best format (not .pdf!) for sending by email and posting online. You also need a professional email address (recruiters are put off by unprofessional addresses).

Fact: 93% of recruiters will look at your online profile.

What It Means to You: You need a professional social media presence. You need an online profile that supports your resume (and vice versa).

Fact: You can use as many pages as you need for concise, well-written, focused content.

What It Means to You: You still need to use space wisely. Recruiters and hiring managers dislike generic resumes—with content to fit any job that happens to come along. They want a targeted, sharp resume that shows them what you can do for the company.

Fact: Work history may include previous employment, volunteer work, consulting, freelancing, and contract positions.

What It Means to You: You can make use of every demonstration of your skills and accomplishments as long as you organize your “work history” properly. That may mean creating a section of “Relevant Experience” or “Career Highlights” or it may mean combining consulting jobs under a “Consulting” headline to avoid an appearance of job hopping.

Fact: Electronic spell-checkers and grammar-checkers miss major errors in grammar and spelling or even give bad advice.

What It Means to You: You must proofread manually and ask at least one other person to proofread for you—you are probably so familiar with your resume that your eye may skip over an important error. Use a dictionary!

In the resume world, these facts are not likely to change soon. Please contact Robin’s Resumes® to help your resume succeed in the real world.