Letters Of Recommendation: Why Recommendation Letters Can Give You An Advantage During The Screening Process

For candidates who are searching for jobs, resumes are a big deal and they spend a good amount of time on them. And it's just right that they should because resumes are, indeed, vital to the job search game. But although they are important, resumes are not the most important of all. Why is that?

Imagine yourself as the HR of a company and you're the one in charge of screening candidates for an open position your company's offering. You won't only be looking at a few resumes, if the job is really good, you would be looking to evaluate tons of resumes.

Out of the possible hundreds or thousands of resumes on your desk, you'll have a hard time picking the right candidate. Your first job is to whittle some of this bulk down.

The vast majority of people who are in the pile will only submit a resume and a cover sheet. And almost all of the cover sheets will say little more than "here you go." You'll throw these out immediately.

You'll probably insist that resumes be kept to one page (this is becoming more and more common). You'll toss out those that are 2 pages or more. Most probably, you'll also throw away those that are distracting to the eyes, like large fonts, unorganized formats, and inappropriate colors. Then you will focus your attention to the remaining resumes.

Do you see how it works now? You've trimmed down the bunch significantly. In the first round, if your resume gets noticed, it gets tossed.

At this point, even though you've luckily made it this far, your resume still has to compete with quite a few more resumes. It would be wonderful if your resume stands out enough to get picked but not too much that it gets tossed out.

That's why letters of recommendation are such an effective competitive advantage: they'll get you noticed without getting you thrown out!

For more information, including tips, samples, and templates, please check out our website: letters of recommendation