Just today I got feedback from one of my resume clients, who was a bit beat up by her recent telephone interview. Related: 5 Steps To An Excellent Interview “What happened?” I asked. The answer was that the interviewer had pulled a bunch of old school interview classics like “Tell me a little bit about yourself” and “What are your three main weaknesses?” My client felt that this type of “old-school” interviewing did not result in a natural flow of two business professionals determining a potential match, but rather ended in a “what type of canned response have you got for me” type of interview. But what to do in a situation like this? After all you don’t want to be rude, and you can’t really tell the interviewer what type of questions you want to be asked.

A frequently discussed resume question between resume writers, recruiters, and applicants is the question of the influence of Applicant Tracking Systems (“ATS”) on the appropriate length of a resume. Resume: Why You Shouldn't Write A 'One-Size-Fits-All' Resume Back in ancient history (anyone remember the 90s?), the vast majority of resumes were submitted on paper via snail mail and/or fax. Pre-screening of resumes those days was performed by a real human being that physically touched, handled, and actually “scanned” the documents with his/her eyes. That meant a lot of work for HR. Just imagine having to sift through 200 or 300 applications. The rule of thumb in those days for job hunters was thus to not “aggravate” or “bother” the pre-screening human being with overly long resumes that might have meant a quick toss to the “no” pile. As a consequence, job hunters were advised to limit their resumes to one or two pages.

Today I am going to debunk a common misconception on effective resume writing: the resume magic that will solve your keyword problems for passing Applicant Tracking Systems (“ATS”) once and for all. Related: Does Your Resume Get Along With Your Personal Brand? Recently, one of my clients forwarded to me about 15 job postings he was interested in. While this alone might already seem a bit lavish (I generally only request two to three job postings for my writing process), the client asked me to include “all the relevant keywords” from these job postings into his resume. Neither would I have been able to do this, nor did I feel like doing this. Why? Because it would not have served the purpose of my client: getting job interviews.