News Flash! The Sky Isn't Falling!

by Jack Mulcahy of Jack Mulcahy Resume Services ( 15-Mar-2012 )

 

Lately, numerous "experts," business higher-ups, career coaches, and other authorities have bombarded us with the idea that computers and scanners have become the tools of choice for reading resumes. This is the future and we’d better adjust to it. And it’s true that if you send your resume to a large employer such as Siemens, Sears, Microsoft, Apple, or similar giants, it probably will be scanned first.

But let’s look at what we mean by “large employers.” The US Bureau of Labor Statistics considers firms “large” that have 500 or more employees. And it’s probably true that a good number of large firms employ computerized scanners to sort through the 400 or more resumes each ad brings in. If you send your resume to one of those, it may never be seen again.

Yet according to the BLS, most jobs by far are with small to mid-size businesses:
* 120 million employees work for 8 million employers.
* 55% have fewer than 100 employees.
* 81% have fewer than 500 employees.
* Only 19% of workers are employed by companies with 500 or more employees.

I think the odds of your resume being scanned by a company with fewer than 500 employees (81% of all employers) aren’t very high. The smaller the business, the less likely it is to use scanners because it’s not cost-effective. Small companies aren’t bombarded with resumes to the degree the large companies are.

Here are some more statistics, in case you’re still wavering.

Small firms:
* Represent 99.7% of all employer firms.
* Employ half of all private sector employees.
* Pay 44% of total U.S. private payroll.
* Generated 65% of net new jobs over the past 17 years.
* Create more than half of the nonfarm private GDP.
* Hire 43% of high tech workers (scientists, engineers, computer programmers, and others).
* Are 52% home-based and 2% franchises.
* Made up 97.5% of all identified exporters and produced 31% of export value in FY 2008.
* Produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms.

Have you stopped running around yet? Yes, it’s entirely possible that your resume could read be first by a machine. I just don’t think the sky is falling yet.

(Thank you, Laurie J. Smith for the cited statistics.) 

Sources: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Census Bureau and Intl. Trade Admin.; Advocacy-funded research by Kathryn Kobe, 2007 (www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs299.pdf) and CHI Research, 2003 (www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs225.pdf); U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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