Resume screening like the game of BINGO

For your resume, why is reverse engineering a job posting so important? 

For those that aren’t aware of reverse engineering a job posting, check out this post first.

In summary, it’s the process of tailoring your resume for the job posting. Blank out all of your bullets. Take the first responsibility (qualification or whatever) bullet on the job posting and ask yourself “what experience have I had best demonstrates my ability to do this bullet?”. Then fill it on your resume. And do that until you’ve hit all the points on the job posting. 

How does that relate to BINGO? 

For those that don’t know BINGO the game takes the numbers 1-75 chosen randomly. Each player gets a card with 5 columns with the letter B-I-N-G-O at the top. Twenty five numbers are arranged in a 5×5 grid. Actually it’s 24 numbers as the center space under the N is normally given as a free space. The leader calls out numbers at random. First person to make a line, several lines or match their whole card wins. They yell BINGO to celebrate (and to indicate that they won)!

Consider the job posting is the recruiter’s BINGO card. You call out your skills (the bingo numbers) with the bullets on your resume. The recruiter has in their head how many skills or experiences you need to match their card. For general labour jobs it might be just 1 line. For highly specialized jobs it could be the whole card. When your resume presents information and the recruiter matches their requirements to fill their “BINGO card”, then they can yell BINGO and give you an interview. If they don’t match or not enough of them match, then they move to the next candidate…

Now extend that to the traditional resume method of creating one resume and sending the same to every job posting. How likely is what you listed on your resume likely to match the recruiter’s BINGO card (job posting)? 

Yes, reverse engineering the job posting does take time, and spending extra time to make your resume reverse-engineered can vastly improve your odds at yelling BINGO!

Also published on Medium.