Transcription
I'm scared to make this video. Over the past 2 months, I've applied to over 500 jobs using five almost identical resumés to see what recruiters care about when determining whether or not they should give someone an interview. The results are a little scary. Twice the number of interviews than resume number two. This one was eye-opening. That is astronomical. Has anyone heard of this company? 18 interviews, 18% interview rate. Wow, this is mind-blowing. You can take control of your resume. If your resume looks like this, throw it out to the dumpster. So without further ado, let's get into it.
The plan is simple. Make one resume, applied to 100 jobs. Then make four identical resumés with small tweaks here and there and see how many interviews I get. However many interviews I get, that is what we're going to call the interview rate. You then get that same exact resume and make one small tweak. The name, the company that you worked at, a job gap, the template of resume that you use. Then using each of those resumes to apply to the same 100 jobs and the results are staggering.
Here's resume number one. You can see here I opted for a Caucasian male name. Way at the top, I put Facebook, AKA Meta, as a first work experience. I kept all the other bullet points the same. This is a fake spam email. The number is fake, so don't try to call me, you freaking weirdos. I'm just kidding. As you can see here, the most recent experience is Meta. I wanted to normalize it to make sure that this resume was going to get interviews. Added some entrepreneurial experience. Added Williams College. This is a good standard resume. So this is going to be our control variable. Yes, I'm talking about the thing that we all learned in seventh grade science. I applied to 100 jobs that were tailored to this resume and guess how many interviews this one got? 18 interviews, 18% interview rate, 18 out of 100 job applications. Now, by all means, this is a great percentage. Anything above a 5% interview rate is great. 18%, that is astronomical. We know that this resume works.
Now let's pop up resume number two. Do you notice the difference? Resume number one, resume number two. Resume number one, resume number two. Resume number one. My watch keeps turning off, it's kind of annoying. Has anyone heard of this company? Ninis, N, N, ninjas, N, energis, energy juice, energy synthesis, I don't know. I was scrolling on LinkedIn, found a company name that was the most obscure that I could find and I put it on this resume. Notice how these two resumés are almost identical. The only difference between these two resumés is the brand and the company name and that's it. This one got a total of 10 interviews. Let's pause for a second. Pull up resume number one and two again. Resume number one and resume number two. Notice how the bullet points are the exact same, yet resume number one had almost twice the number of interviews than resume number two. So brand name, yes, that matters. Brand name will get you almost twice the number of interviews on your resume that you otherwise wouldn't have gotten.
But let's take a step back here. Let's imagine that you're on Google. We're doing Google search, maybe we can do Google search of like, um, resume templates. There's like the ones with a lot of colors and maybe a photo and all the stuff in the background. You find this beautiful resume template and now you're thinking to yourself, okay, wow, I'm definitely going to get interviewed. This is what I call beautiful resumes. A beautiful resume is one that optimizes for the eye. It has a lot of color, it has two columns, three columns, but it's not really intuitive to read. A functional resume is designed for readability and that's what we had with resume one and two. So I introduce you resume number three. This is a resume template I made on Canva. It has as much the same information I could fit on there. Again, I would argue that resume number three is actually more beautiful than resume number one. Based on that, you would think, okay, resume number three is going to get more interviews, right? This one was eye-opening. Even though this one had Meta and Facebook on the resume, even though that the bullet points were the same, this one got a total of eight interviews. Even less than having a brand name company on your resume. That is crazy. If your resume looks like this, throw it out to the dumpster. And maybe Jordan, we can add like a, like a dumpster animation or something. Use a resume template similar to resume template number one. Copy that structure. Find it in the description below. That's what's going to get you interviews. The exception to this rule is if you're going to a design-related function, then maybe you could add a little bit of your spice into it. But for everything else, keep it simple, keep it structured. Recruiters love it.
So this is where I stopped my experiment because I was like, wow, this is mind-blowing. I asked all of you guys on my Instagram and TikTok what experiment you wanted me to do next. And so I added on two more just for you. What happens if we use the exact same resume but we used an ethnic women's name? We see companies talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives all the time, but does it actually translate well to a fair process? Let's find out. This is resume number four. Notice how it's almost identical to resume number one. We're keeping the tests exactly the same. I did change a company name to another big tech company name. I didn't want it to be flagged by the recruiter when I was applying to the same jobs. This one had 10 interviews compared to resume number one that had a Caucasian white male name. That is mind-blowing. Just because of your name, almost half the interviews. And this is not a new discovery. Harvard did a study on how they believe that applications should be anonymized because by anonymizing it, it makes the application process fair and simple for everybody. What's the takeaway? If you have an ethnic name like mine, Chak Le, we have to play around this game.
One of the most common questions I get is, Jerry, what should I do if I'm going back into the job force, workforce, job force, work, workforce? We have resume number five. This one had a three-year job gap. This one had eight interviews. Oh wow, the percentages are the same. I don't realize. So this one had a very similar interview rate as a Canva resume template. But I can almost understand why from an employer's perspective. An employer is going to look at this resume and think to themselves, wow, this person has been out of work for 3 years. Can they adapt to this new working environment? But that's not going to stop you from taking action. If you have a job gap on your resume, this is what I want you to do. First things first is I want you to remove the months off of your resume. Eliminate the bias for people that ask you, hey, you're out of work for 3 months, why is that? Nah. The second thing I want you to do, start taking courses immediately. It could be relevant to your field or it could be relevant to the field you want to get into. LinkedIn has a bunch of great free online courses that you can take. Google, Facebook, all the other companies have something similar. But I want you to take them and start doing projects. And what do I mean by projects? Projects are the homework assignments that you'll have during those certificate programs. Hey, help Sally design a marketing campaign for Sally's cookies. That is experience. Put it on your resume, even if it's fictitious. The skills that you are going to apply are going to be the same that you would apply in the corporate world.
So to recap, let's stack rank all the resumes. Resume number one had the highest number of interviews at 18 interviews. Rank two and three are tied. Resume number two is the one that didn't have the company brand name at the top that had a 10% interview rate. And resume number four, the ethnic woman's name, also had a 10% interview rate. Third place, we have resume number three and resume number five. The Canva resume template, aka the beautiful resume, as well as the job gap. If any of these apply to you, make sure that you know that you can take control of your resume. Of course, if you need any help, you can always message me on Instagram, Jerry JH Lee. I appreciate you watching. Let me know your comments down below and until next time, peace.