5 résumé trends – and how HR can prepare for today’s job candidates

Get ready HR: New résumé trends are coming your way.

Between mass layoffs and this year’s hiring trends, you’ll likely see an influx of résumés – and they’ll look and feel a bit different than what you’ve had in recent years.

The reason for change is the same as it has been in the past: Candidates want to stand out. The change will be good for HR because candidates will make your organization’s needs the focus of their résumés.

Résumé trends affect your approach

Now the question is: How can you find the candidates with the most potential to be rock stars in your organization?

“Be efficient and empathetic. Employers must be responsive and considerate of those qualified candidates who are pursuing jobs at organizations for which they are a potential fit,” says Dr. Marie Gould Harper, Interim Acting Provost and Dean of the Dr. Wallace E. Boston Business School at American Public University System. “As candidates progress or fall out of the recruitment process, transparency can be a key differentiator for organizations.”

So when you screen, select and hire, remain as transparent as you expect candidates to be with you. You’ll more likely find the right candidates – and make the best possible hires – when you know what to expect from candidates this year.

Here are the five newest résumé trends:

1. You trump them

More résumés will speak to your business and/or job needs, with less of an emphasis on how awesome the candidate has been. They’ll try to show they’re aware of your business needs and how they can fulfill those needs.

They’ll likely pick apart your job postings to identify your hiring managers’ pain points and tweak their résumé to meet those needs. For instance, if you cite growth as a goal this year, strong candidates will highlight or explain how they’ve created or supported growth – and intend to do the same for you.

Tell them what you need, and they’ll respond accordingly.

“In today’s brisk job market, candidates need to know what makes the organization unique. We can’t all be Amazon, Apple or Costco,” says Gould Harper. “How does an organization stand out versus the competition? What is the vision and mission? Why do employees get excited to come to work every day? Sharing a few things every candidate should know about the company is key.”

2. Impact trumps accomplishments

If you’re scanning résumés for – or asking AI to identify – a list of quantified accomplishments, you might come up empty handed.

For the last decade, job candidates created résumés laden with the goals they achieved and large financial or operational gains they attained. Not now.

They’ll still likely include accomplishments, but they’ll emphasize how their work impacted the organization, operations or overall good. And that should help you identify if or where they can impact your operations.

3. ‘Power skills’ trump all others

You’ll likely see candidates focus on softer skills in their résumés this year. And you’ll probably like it, considering softer skills are more important than ever in the workplace.

“The pandemic made it clear that resilience is the No. 1 power skill – the key indicator for personal well-being, professional success and life success in general,” says Jan Bruce, CEO and Co-founder, meQuilibrium. “Resilience can reduce turnover and enhance retention in an organization and it’s critical to offer proof of this skill on a résumé.”

Candidates will likely emphasize their abilities to solve problems, stay focused, use emotional intelligence, handle change, adapt when necessary and maintain a growth mindset.

“These skills will be demonstrated on a résumé through examples of managing adversity or how a problem was solved,” says Bruce. “Companies, jobs, products, people – everything about work and life is evolving, and every employee from the warehouse to the C-suite must be resilient in order to understand and adapt to change.” 

4. Simple trumps excess

This is a great trend for recruiting specialists, HR pros and hiring managers: Job seekers are simplifying their résumés this year. After years of including clichés and every accomplishment, volunteer passion and pastimes, they’ll whittle down to what really matters: how they fit into the role and your organization.

Ideally, you’ll see that in a one-page, bullet pointed résumé, highlighting the key competencies and facts in a reverse chronological format. Then, they should direct you to more information – perhaps LinkedIn – so you can determine if it’s a good fit.

5. Urgency trumps passiveness

Job candidates were passive in recent years – sometimes ghosting you in the hiring process – but they won’t likely do now. And their résumés will prove it.

With candidates trimming down their résumés, they’ll want to only apply for job openings that have a streamlined application process.

“We all want to create a balance between having the applicant demonstrate they’re serious about pursuing an open job and enabling them to do so in a reasonable amount of time,” says Gould Harper. “But I’ve often found that companies lack the awareness or intentions of making their application submissions streamlined.”

To appease candidates and their streamlined résumés, Gould Harper suggests you give applicants the ability to:

• view their résumé beside the job description once it’s in your system
• see where they are in your process
• contact a specific recruiter or hiring manager for updates, and
• apply for related jobs easily.