Résumés or cereals: packaging matters

By Chandan K Jha & Sudipta Sarangi

Differentiating what you are selling from the crowd matters in the marketplace, whether for products or jobs.

When the going gets tough, even the tough find it hard to land good jobs. It’s even harder for those not made of sterner stuff.

In a slowdown scenario with all the attendant uncertainty, finding employment requires that extra bit — of skills, luck, connections or a combination of these (ideally all three).

Complicating matters is the tendency for any vacancy advertised during such times to receive an overwhelming number of responses. It is unclear in such situations how much effort prospective employers would undertake to examine each résumé, creating that nagging doubt: Will mine even get noticed?