When writing a resume be sure to include a brief description of what the company manufactures or the service(s) it provides for each company listed on the resume. These statements can be as brief as “manufactures injection molded plastic components for the automotive industry” or “manufacturer of non-invasive blood glucose monitoring devices”.
Including a brief description of your past employer’s services or products seems very basic but probably 30 percent of all the resumes I read lack this information. I realize that a lot of job seekers believe that if they have an engineering degree they can engineer anywhere or if they have sales experience they can sell anything. Maybe this is true, but it does not matter if the company will not hire an engineer or a salesperson who does not have experience in their specific industry. Companies do not hire recruiting firms just to send them resumes of all engineers or all salespeople. They pay us to find people that match their job requirements and if there is no product or service experience on the resume recruiters have no way of knowing if it is worth contacting the job seeker.
It should be remembered that the average recruiter receives over 100 resume per week, and Corporate Recruiters at large companies receive many times that number. If 20 minutes are spent talking to each person who sends a resume, approximately 33 hours of the Third Party Recruiter’s work week will be spent just talking to candidates that may or may not have the experience their client companies want. Third Party as well as Corporate Recruiters depend on the employer’s products or services being stated on the resume as one of the primary screening criteria. If there is no mention of past employer’s products or services, the person doing the screening usually assumes the job seeker does not meet the job requirements and discards the resume.