A Framework for Résumé Decisions: Comparing Applicants’ and Employers’ Reasons

Abstract

What reasons do applicants use to write résumés, and what reasons do employers use to evaluate them? This article advocates for teaching reasons as a way to empower writers to make more nuanced, adaptive résumé decisions. Drawing from a study of 63 students, 20 advisors, and 24 employers, the article touches on résumé format, sections, and items; then it moves beyond formal features to compare eight reasons that participants used as a framework in their decision making: relevance, recency, value, personality, fluff, unprofessionalism, discrimination, and applicant fit. It ends with pedagogical suggestions for teaching this framework alongside résumé formal features.

Keywords

résumés rhetorical analysis employers hiring pedagogy

Imagine a student is writing her résumé and asks whether she should include an advanced leadership position in one of her campus’s largest student organizations. She is applying to a competitive internship in a nationwide (U.S.) financial firm, and leadership is relevant to the job. In fact, she is the only one with that type of leadership experience in her peer group, so it makes her stand out among her competitors.

Would you advise her to put it on her résumé?

Based on research regarding including extracurricular activities in résumés, the answer would probably be “yes.” Decades of data suggest that extracurricular activities are appealing to employers (e.g.,Cole et al., 2007;Hutchinson & Brefka, 1997;Risavy, 2017).Nemanick and Clark (2002), for example, manipulated three characteristics of extracurricular activities (number of activities, holding positions of leadership, and relevance of activities) to assess their effect on résumé readers’ impressions of an applicant. They found that résumés including many leadership positions were rated most favorably; even résumés with few leadership positions were rated more favorably if those positions were relevant to the job. If your student bases her decision on studies like these, her choice would be to keep the leadership position.

Now, let me add a last detail: Her leadership position was for the Chinese Communist Party.

Would you advise her to put it on her résumé?

This example comes from a student I interviewed during my research. Her advisor told her to remove the position from her résumé. When I presented this scenario at the 2019 Association for Business Communication Conference, the audience’s response moved from “yes” to an emphatic “no.” The shift demonstrates that advanced résumé writers make decisions based on factors other than a list of recommended items. However, résumé scholarship still places heavy attention on formal features such as format, word choice, sections, and items. A selection of studies from the past 25 years shows the focus on features:

Format and design, such as color, fonts, graphics, or the one-page rule (e.g.,Arnulf et al., 2010;Blackburn-Brockman & Belanger, 2001;Diaz, 2013;Guffey & Loewy, 2013,2019;Hart-Davidson, 1996;Johnson-Sheehan, 2011;Popham et al., 2017)

Tone and phrasing, including keywords and spelling (e.g.,Bennett, 2014;Boettger & Emory Moore, 2018;Charney et al., 1992;Diaz, 2013;Larsen, 2005;Martin-Lacroux & Lacroux, 2017;Ross & Young, 2005;Yate, 2016)

Sections and their organization, such as skills and objective statements (e.g.,Brown & Campion, 1994;Cole et al., 2007;Hutchinson & Brefka, 1997;Knouse, 1994;McKinney et al., 2003;Tsai et al., 2011)

Items and activities that go into sections, such as internships, extracurricular activities, GPA, or employment gaps (e.g.,Darolia et al., 2015;Nemanick & Clark, 2002;Nunley et al., 2016;Quadlin, 2018;Stout & Olson-Buchanan, 2018;Waung et al., 2017;Weisshaar, 2018)

Even scholarship that explores larger concepts, such asPopken’s (1992,1993) work on the rhetoric of résumés, focuses on formal features:Popken (1992)pointed to the sections and items of a résumé as potentially exclusionary.

Studies on formal features are one component for guiding applicants to create effective, audience-centered résumés. All the above studies attempt to show how formal features signal something to employers. For example,Stout and Olson-Buchanan (2018)considered how employers’ opinions about an applicant were affected by the presence of sorority and fraternity extracurricular activities. In addition, regularly updated research on formal features is necessary because employers’ preferences change, as seen in the diminishing importance of the objective statement. The influence of these studies can be seen in classroom materials. For example, technical, professional, and business communication textbooks often organize résumé chapters into common sections of a résumé and the chronological, functional, skills, and scannable types of résumés (e.g.,Guffey & Loewy, 2013, 2019;Johnson-Sheehan, 2011;Lannon & Gurak, 2016;MacRae, 2016;Markel, 2015;Markel & Selber, 2017;Pfeiffer & Adkins, 2012;Quintanilla & Wahl, 2020). These discussions of formal features are usually embedded in a larger context of conducting research on potential companies (Guffey & Loewy, 2013;Johnson-Sheehan, 2011;Lannon & Gurak, 2016;Pfeiffer & Adkins, 2012;Quintanilla & Wahl, 2020) and, sometimes, creating an inventory of the applicant’s aptitudes (e.g.,Johnson-Sheehan, 2011;Lannon & Gurak, 2016). These textbooks explain that formal features respond to employers’ expectations about the structure and organization of a résumé, and some textbooks specify that formal features meet the needs of employers who are impatient, tired, picky about grammar, and discerning about professional design (Pfeiffer & Adkins, 2012). In some cases, this audience-centered approach leads to a different organization of the textbook:Anderson (2018)uses the résumé as an example of audience-centered writing, andGraves and Graves (2012)use it as an example of a genre set. There is some evidence that students do not always use textbooks for résumé guidance (Randazzo, 2016), so the correlation between textbooks and classrooms is not perfect; however, the inclusion of formal features as a part of audience-centered writing suggests that textbooks’ audiences (students and teachers) use formal features for making résumé decisions.

But as the example with the Chinese Communist Party demonstrates, advanced writers make résumé decisions based on something other than formal features. Indeed, as this article details later, most business and professional communication educators teach an audience-centered résumé that considers more than just a list of formal features. These educators lack an important resource because there is little research that explicates the reasoning applicants use or how those reasons align with employers’ perspectives. Notable exceptions includeKilloran (2006,2009), who moved beyond text to consider participants’ feedback and situations; andDeKay (2006), who conducted a case study of one individual’s résumé choices. Studies like Killoran’s and DeKay’s are rarer than research on formal features, and none of these studies have compared applicants’ and employers’ perspectives. There is opportunity for deeper understanding of (a) the underlying reasons that applicants use as they write their résumés and (b) the reasons that employers use to reject or accept a résumé.

Understanding the everyday, often unstated reasons that people use for writing and assessing résumés helps fill some gaps in résumé scholarship. The first gap is inconsistency. Research has demonstrated that employers do not agree on what constitutes “effective” formats, items, or organization (Boettger & Emory Moore, 2018;Camp et al., 2014;Pan et al., 2002;Ross & Young, 2005).Popham et al. (2017)found that “there was not a statistically reliable difference in the effects of résumé design on hiring decision or confidence in that decision” (p. 1246). These results suggest that employers use more holistic and complex criteria than what happens at the level of items, format, organization, or design. The second gap is stagnation and situatedness. Formal features change rapidly because of technology and contemporary preferences, meaning that advice about color, fonts, sections, layout, and organization quickly stagnates. In addition, formal features are limited to the situation under which they are studied (e.g., U.S. vs. Chinese résumés), so advice about one context might not apply to another. Writers who rely too heavily on formal features, then, can have trouble adapting to novel and contemporary contexts. Third, these studies lack explanation about why people choose to conform to or violate format guidelines (Amare & Manning, 2009;Waung et al., 2017). Applicants’ desires have been a point of discussion in recruitment and selection scholarship (e.g.,Avery & McKay, 2006;Catanzaro et al., 2010;Ronda et al., 2018;Ryan & Derous, 2016;Thomas & Wise, 1999;Williamson et al., 2010) but are noticeably missing from some résumé scholarship.

Addressing these gaps in résumé scholarship can help educators and students make more nuanced, adaptive, and empowered decisions about their résumés. For educators and students who approach the résumé through formal features (design, items, organization, word choice), this article provides a framework for adding more nuance to that approach. For educators who use an audience-centered approach, this article provides a richer and more explicit framework of applicants’ and employers’ tacit reasoning. It draws on data from a multiphase, qualitative study that attempted to find trends in people’s explanations about their choices when writing and evaluating résumés. To demonstrate how using formal features is limited for creating audience-centered résumés, I include a section with quantitative frequencies about formal features followed by a deeper discussion about applicants’ and employers’ reasons. Finally, through some suggested class activities, I explore how a framework for résumé decisions can help students better decide whether an item belongs on a résumé as well as evaluate others’ advice based on how well it follows those reasons to achieve a goal.

Method and Participants

This article draws on data gathered for a larger project with these guiding research questions:

Research Question 1:How do people describe a “good” or “bad” résumé?

Research Question 2:Why do people choose to include or exclude items on their résumés?

Research Question 3:How do applicants’ reasons align with employers’ reasons?

This project uses a qualitative, multiphase approach. As scholars who use quantitative methods have also pointed out (Baert, 2017;Mishel, 2016), qualitative studies are useful for obtaining nuanced explanations about why applicants choose certain information for their résumés as well as reasons employers use to reject or accept a résumé. In addition, since reasons are less visible than textual features, studying them required interviewing people who make the decisions rather than analyzing common patterns of résumé text. While an observational study would have been ideal for uncovering how people act in context, observations are difficult for hiring situations because hiring laws require confidentiality. Therefore, I chose to inductively analyze participants’ self-reported reasons, keeping in mind that self-reported data is always flawed by people’s memories, lying, or misperceptions (Conklin & Hayhoe, 2011;Koerber & McMichael, 2008). To counteract this limitation of self-reported data, I triangulated data across multiple participant groups and research sites, conducted member checking of the data, and split the study into two phases.

The first phase focused on undergraduate students and their instructors and career counselors (called “advisors” for brevity). I surveyed 25 students and conducted 12 interviews and 15 focus groups with 63 undergraduate students across two sites:

Site 1:A large research-one university in a midsized Southwest city (approximately 35,000 students; city population approximately 250,000)

Site 2:A private liberal arts college in an urban Western city (approximately 3,500 students; city population approximately one million)

At the same time, I interviewed 20 U.S. advisors from Site 1, Site 2, and a third site: a small community college in a rural city of the same Western state as the liberal arts college (approximately 1,500 students; city population approximately 15,000). This process yielded just over 39 audio hours of data, with 23.75 audio hours from students and 15.5 from advisors.

Students’ and advisors’ audio files were transcribed and then coded using NVivo software andSaldaña’s (2012)qualitative coding techniques. This phase was an inductive qualitative coding approach, meaning I had no premade categories before starting to code (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008). I asked students and advisors the reasons that they used when deciding whether to keep or remove an item from a résumé. Their answers generated nascent categories with terms that repeatedly linked to each category: for example, Relevance was sometimes phrased as “relevant” but also “tailored” or “customized.” To build definitions for each category, I asked participants in later interviews to help me define, refute, or complicate categories that arose in earlier interviews. In multiple iterative coding cycles, I recoded transcripts as new categories arose and participants complicated definitions. I also conducted member-checking emails with participants to obtain their perspectives on the categories and to help me refine them, an important process for increasing qualitative trustworthiness (Creswell, 1998;Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

For the second phase of the study, I used trends in students’ and advisors’ data to create questions for in-depth interviews with 24 employers. Building the interview questions in this way allowed me to (a) obtain employers’ opinions about applicants’ reasons and (b) use employers’ feedback to complicate the categories that students and advisors had discussed. The employers varied on several important metrics: their role in the hiring process, their industries, the size of their companies, and their regions of the United States (seeTable 1for details of each metric). This demographic variability allowed me to determine whether some reasons were stable across these variables. The employer interviews yielded 31 audio hours, with interviews lasting anywhere from 45 minutes (shortest) to 2 hours and 50 minutes (longest).

Table 1.

Employers’ Metrics.

Metric	Frequencies and explanations
Role in the hiring process	• Five (21%) were “front line” people who filtered the raw résumé pile but did not participate in later hiring steps • Seven (29%) were mid-level, who received a pre-filtered pile and then refined it for a future committee • One (4%) never saw the raw résumé pile but made the final hiring decision • The remaining 11 (46%) occupied multiple steps in the hiring process
Industries	• Six (25%) were from advertising or marketing • Four (17%) were from engineering fields • Four (17%) hired technical writers • Two (8%) were in food service • Three (13%) were in staffing services or recruitment that served multiple industries • The remaining 5 (21%) were from miscellaneous industries such as medicine and interior design
Size of their companies	• Two (8%) worked in very small (less than 50 employee) offices • Three (13%) were in organizations with 200-500 employees • The remaining 19 (79%) were in companies with at least 7,500 employees, with the largest being over 400,000 employees • Six (25%), including several in the above categories, had worked in multiple organizations of different sizes
Regions of the United States^a	• Midwest: 7 (29%) • Northeast: 2 (8%) • South: 6 (25%) • West: 9 (38%) • National (more than one region): 10 (42%)

Defined according to the U.S. Census Map, and participants who hired in multiple regions or internationally were counted first in their workplace location, then national

Employer data was coded in a similar manner as student and advisor data. However, because I had some premade categories from the student and advisor results, this phase was a combination of deductive and inductive coding (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008). The premade categories deductively guided coding for much of the employer transcripts. But I also inductively attended to new information that the employers provided: for example, employers added the category of Value. Per iterative guidelines, I recoded all the data (students, advisors, and employers) when a new category appeared.

While a qualitative, inductive, human–participant methodology was well-suited to my research goals, it has several limitations. It does not yield statistically generalizable inferences. It is also limited because U.S. hiring laws restrict our ability to obtain one hallmark of qualitative rigor: observation. This restriction means that most researchers must rely on self-reported data, which is inherently flawed (Conklin & Hayhoe, 2011;Koerber & McMichael, 2008). Even with the triangulation methods I attempted in this study, the below results have this limitation. Self-reported data for the student sample, specifically, could be viewed with caution because several of the students in my study were still developing their understanding of a résumé. However, all the students had written at least one résumé prior to my interview; 19 students (30%) had written five résumés or more, suggesting that they were less developmental; and two students (3%) had hired staff in their previous jobs.

A more significant limitation was the demographic diversity of the final participant samples. Participants self-identified into demographic categories. Student participants were predominantly female, White, and from the United States. They had some gender diversity (67% female, 33% male), some racial/ethnic diversity (57% White, 16% Latinx, 6% Black, 2% Asian American), and some diversity of national identity (84% U.S., 14% Chinese, and 2% French). The advisors sample had similar demographics trends: some gender diversity (60% female, 40% male) but limited racial/ethnic diversity (90% White, 5% Black, 5% Latinx). I did not ask for sexuality or ability status in my student and advisor samples. The employer sample demographic trends showed no racial diversity (100% White), some gender diversity (54% female, 46% male), and some sexual orientation diversity (13% LGBTQ). And though I asked them about it, none of my employer participants reported diversity in terms of ability, either physical or neurodiversity.

Despite these drawbacks, this methodology is useful for opening new scholarship and approaches that benefit educators, résumé writers, and other researchers. Understanding the implicit reasoning behind résumés allows educators and résumé writers to make more nuanced and informed decisions. These arguments are best illustrated by the results in the next sections. I first begin with data about résumé formal features: formats (e.g., single page vs. multiple pages), sections (e.g., objective statements), and items and activities (e.g., particular jobs or internships). Because of limitations with formal features, the results then move from features to reasons. The article ends with examples of how to use reasons in our classes to help students take more adaptive actions when writing résumés.

Results

Résumé Sections, Items and Activities, and Formats

Interview results indicated that advisors do use formal features when teaching the résumé. All 20 advisors discussed formal features such as design, formats, sections, and items and activities of a résumé, usually alongside reasons for making those formal decisions (e.g., proving relevant work activity). Their reliance on formal features varied. The most reliant on formal features was a novice instructor who provided an electronic template for students to use. One career counselor (5%) worked in an office that approved their students’ résumés, and students had to pass preset sections, items, organization, and design requirements in order to be approved. Three other advisors (15%) discussed résumé designs and sections that were industry standards in fields such as nursing and engineering. Finally, five advisors (25%) lamented that students organize and design their résumés in ways that highlight unimportant information. Formal features are a common component of teaching résumés, although educators’ emphasis on the importance of those features varied.

Notably, results from student focus groups and interviews suggest that even when educators emphasize something more than formal features for making résumé decisions, students still retain the formal features as the most important part of the lesson. Seventeen students (27%) explained that their instructors made them feel as though format was more important than content when making résumé decisions, as illustrated in this focus group conversation between students who had taken the same technical communication course:

S17: Definitely shouldn’t be so much emphasis on the format—like I don’t think it’s 100% all about appearance, but it definitely does make a difference.

S19, responding: Well, I mean, my first class in that capstone course [. . .] we did the résumé workshop where we printed out five or six, and you had a minute to pick out which one you were going to call in for an interview [. . .] And, uh, you found out that [the successful] résumé has the exact same content as some guy who didn’t even make the first cut, because [his résumé] was laid out bad. [. . .] So, I think that that is where I really . . . oh, format matters, I mean it showed me more than anything.

S18, responding to S17 and S19: Basically, format is going to get you in the door to where you’re considered, and content will actually get you hired. So, content doesn’t really matter at first.

Unbeknownst to the students, the educator who gave this exercise explained to me that it was designed to teach students an audience-centered approach to résumés. Unbeknownst to the educator, students retained the lesson more about formal features than the reasons behind those features. Since students and educators clearly approach résumé decisions based on formal features (to varying degrees), this section discusses those features as well as the limitations of relying too heavily on that approach.

I asked students and advisors which sections they always included in their résumés and how they organized them. All 20 advisors and 63 students identified contact information, education, and work experience as important sections; but beyond that, they reported debates about several résumé sections and items:

Objective statements

References

Hobbies and interests

Computer skills

Skills summary

Coursework

Advisors also wondered about how employers respond to specific formats, especially the “one-page rule” and functional résumé layouts. So, I asked employers about all of these debated sections, items, and formats. Additionally, even though advisors and students felt internships, volunteer work, and student leadership were important on a résumé, I asked employers about those items because other research has shown debate about them.

Employers agreed with students and advisors that contact information, education, and work history were necessary for résumés, but they disagreed on the other features.Table 2summarizes all their responses, but several of their debates merit more discussion because they provide pedagogical takeaways:

Few of the “rules” of résumés are hard-and-fast. There are gradations to employers’ responses about each feature because their recommendations are based on underlying reasons (phrased as “if” statements): for example, many of them said coursework was acceptable if (a) the position is entry level or (b) the applicant just graduated college, or (c) the applicant needed more information on their résumé, or (d) coursework was the most relevant thing an applicant had.

Work outside of regular classes is important. Internships are most desirable because they are competitive, demonstrate skills, and build networks. Volunteer work and student leadership were equal to each other, but less impressive than internships because they were less competitive to obtain. Course projects are least competitive; and while they are acceptable, employers prefer to see something beyond coursework.

Unique experiences help. Course projects were acceptable only if they were something unique, like working with a real client or organization. Computer skills are the same, with advanced skills (like proficiency in an industry-specific software) more impressive than general Microsoft Office.

Table 2.

Formal Features and Employer Feedback.

Résumé feature	Employers’ feedback	Frequency and percentage (N= 24)
Format: One-page rule	More than one page acceptable	13 employers (54%)
	Will take two pages, but prefers one page	7 (29%)
	One page only	4 (17%)
Format: Functional résumé	Never seen it	7 (29%)
	Applicants can use it	7 (29%)
	Applicants should not use it	6 (25%)
	Mixed reaction	4 (17%)
Section: Objective statements	Do not include	18 (75%)
Section: Objective statements	Include it	6 (25%)
Section: References	List “available upon request”	9 (38%)
	Do not mention references	9 (38%)
	Include references	4 (17%)
	Put on separate page	2 (8%)
Section: Hobbies and interests	Do not include	15 (63%)
	Only include if relevant to the job	5 (21%)
	Include it	4 (17%)
Section: Computer skills	Only list advanced or field-specific software	17 (71%)
	List all software, even Microsoft Office	6 (25%)
	Never list this section	1 (4%)
Section: Skills summary	Avoid subjective phrases like “hard worker”	20 (83%)
	Prefers hard data	13 (54%)
	Do not include this section all	2 (8%)
	Always include	1 (4%)
Section: Coursework	Include it	13 (54%)
	Do not include	6 (25%)
	Only include if relevant to the job	5 (21%)
Item: Internship	Always include, even if irrelevant to the job	16 (67%)
	Only include if relevant to the job	7 (29%)
	Not important because hard to define	1 (4%)
Item: Volunteer work	Only include if relevant to the job	9 (38%)
	Always include	8 (33%)
	Less important than internships or jobs	4 (17%)
	Include some, but not too much	2 (8%)
	Do not include unless you need filler	1 (4%)
Item: Student leadership	Always include	10 (42%)
	Never important to a hiring decision	5 (21%)
	Only include if relevant to the job	3 (13%)
	Do not include unless you need filler	1 (4%)
	No answer	2 (8%)

While the list of sections, formats, and items might be helpful as a basic beginning to résumés, it also demonstrates some of the limitations of using formal features to make decisions. Most obvious is that there is little agreement: for example, six employers (25%) wanted a list of References (including two who wanted them on a separate page), nine employers (38%) wanted some mention of references but no list, and another nine (38%) did not want any mention of references at all. The Skills Summary is even more complex because employers fell into multiple responses. While 13 employers (54%) wanted to see a Skills Summary, 20 of them (83%) did not want to see terms such as “hard worker” in the Skills Summary. The disagreement in participants’ opinions can frustrate people who are learning to write a U.S. résumé. Students expressed dismay about inconsistent advice about sections, items, and formats. As I have detailed elsewhere (Randazzo, 2016), their frustration can lead them to entirely reject advice from educators in favor of personal contacts or industry professionals, even if those nonacademic people have outdated or inaccurate advice. Discrepancies are a result of people’s underlying reasoning, so knowing those reasons can help students understand the source of these differing opinions.

Another limitation of a list of items, sections, or formats is that it does not help us adapt to changing résumé contexts. Even industry professionals have a hard time reentering the workforce if they use outdated reasons. The conventional résumé is still an essential part of the U.S. hiring process (Bajic, 2014), but it works alongside new processes for finding and hiring an applicant. The rise of professional networking sites likeLinkedIn.comor personal online portfolios has changed how applicants present themselves outside the résumé (Killoran, 2009). Applicant tracking systems sometimes require résumés that rely more heavily on textual rhetorical moves than visual ones (Diaz, 2013). Even with conventional U.S. résumés, contemporary preferences for the sections, items, and formats are constantly evolving; for example, textbooks still include objective statements even though 18 employers (75%) in my study did not want it. Their underlying reasons for not wanting an objective statement varied, and sometimes they had more than one reason: seven (29%) called objectives “wasted space” that stated the obvious goal of wanting a job in their industry; six (25%) stated that objectives were usually too vague to be relevant; five (21%) considered objectives “old fashioned”; and one (4%) doubted whether applicants (especially new graduates) could predict their actual job interests or objectives. Viewing the résumé as a list of formal features (items, sections, or formats) misses the underlying reasons that can help applicants adapt to new contexts.

To address some of these limitations, the next section explains the reasons people use when writing and evaluating a résumé. I focus primarily on employers’ responses to students’ and advisors’ strategies.

Reasons for Résumé Decisions

Table 3outlines eight reasons that affected participants’ decision making regarding the résumé: relevance, recency, value, personality, fluff, unprofessionalism, discrimination, and applicant fit. Students and advisors voiced almost all of these reasons (except value) when deciding what to include or exclude while writing résumés, and employers then gave their opinions about those reasons. The first employer I interviewed added value; so, in addition to asking all subsequent employers about their views on value, I recoded students’ and advisors’ data to see whether they had used terms that might fit under the value category.Table 3and its accompanying discussion are organized in descending order reflecting how frequently students discussed each reason; the exception is value, which is near relevance because of their association.

Table 3.

Reasons, Definitions, and Frequencies.

Reason	Definition	Feedback from employers (% of 24)	Example actions that applicants can take
Relevance	Fit with the employer’s job requirements, organizational culture, and/or larger career field	24 (100%) said it is the most important criterion	Using keywords in bulleted lists of items Discussing the company culture in the cover letter
Recency	Items that happened recently; updated information	16 (67%) said recency should be secondary to relevance	Cutting items older than 5-7 years Putting positions in reverse chronological order
Value	Items that show how an applicant can be monetarily valuable to a company (added by hirers during second phase of research)	12 (50%) said was important and distinct from relevance	Including information about increasing efficiency or sales at a previous employer Referencing the amount of money raised for an event
Personality	Items that show an applicant’s personality	11 (46%) said important for at least some positions 6 (25%) said not important for the jobs they hired	Including work on teams or student organizations Keeping an item that shows the ability to work with difficult people
Fluff	Verbiage that makes work experience, skills, or achievements sound more important than they were Borders on unethical behavior; particularly lying about skills or job duties	13 (54%) felt talking up positions was necessary 4 stated that applicants should remove a “talked up” position	Specifying the number of tables handled each night (serving) Detailing the number of years in customer service Describing a time when they picked up a shift for a coworker
Unprofessionalism	Items that students thought an employer might perceive as unprofessional For hirers, this criterion is also signaled in format and grammar	21 (88%) stated that poor grammar marked an applicant as unprofessional 17 (71%) had rejected résumés with unprofessional colors, fonts, or disorganized layouts 10 (42%) said that positions students were concerned about were really a relevance problem	Removing or downplaying items that seem to conflict with the company culture: e.g., removing bartending when applying to a conservative company Avoiding unprofessional fonts, colors, or grammar
Discrimination	Employers’ discrimination against applicants	21 (88%) said it should be something that applicants consider when writing a résumé	Removing items that might open the applicant to discrimination: e.g., removing a religiously affiliated position
Applicant Fit	Fit with the applicant’s needs or identity Often resisted discrimination concerns	7 (29%) used the phrase “you don’t want to work there, anyway” or “you should fight it” about discrimination	Keeping items that signal something important about an applicant’s identity: e.g., keeping a religiously-affiliated position

Detailing each of these reasons and their nuances would be too much for an article-length discussion, so each section only briefly outlines definitions and employers’ responses. They are followed by an explanation of how understanding reasons can help our pedagogy.

Relevance

Every participant in the student and advisor groups brought uprelevance, and employers agreed that it should be the most important criterion that people use to decide whether to include something on a résumé. Participants defined relevance as items or positions that responded to the advertised job requirements, organizational culture, and/or larger career field. For employers, relevance guided the terminology that fits the job or industry (also called keywords). But it was also about selecting positions to include on a résumé: for example, seven employers (29%) noted that internships should be cut if they do not show relevant skills or traits needed for the job.

Recency

Recencywas a term that my participants used to indicate recent or updated information. When discussing recency, employers drew an important distinction that students and advisors sometimes did not. Fifteen students (24%) and three advisors (15%) defined relevance in terms of recency: as one advisor noted, “what’s more recent is almost always going to be more relevant” (A12). However, 16 employers (67%) stated that recency should be asecondaryreason to relevance: even recent items are less important than items that are relevant to the job.

Value

The first employer I interviewed noted thatvaluewas missing from students’ and advisors’ data:

The one that I think they should be thinking about is value. And I don’t mean value from amoralperspective. I mean value from a good-old-fashioned monetary perspective [. . .] I might be reacting to this because of having looked at some millennial résumés [recently], where they kind of do have this touchy-feel-good attitude, and what’s lacking there is that “This is why I am going to be valuable to you and your team.” And so I think that’s a criteria that you should really be thinking about. (E1)

Value was defined as proving monetary worth to an employer, and it was so closely related to relevance that seven employers (29%) asserted value was just another term for relevance. However, 12 employers (50%) distinguished value from relevance. Whereas relevance is limited to the job requirements, value went beyond job requirements to demonstrate skills or experiences that could bring an employer money: for example, applicants could report that they increased sales at a former company even though the new job might not be in sales.

After adding this criterion to the list, I recoded the transcripts from students and advisors. Nine students (14%) purposely included items that showed money-making skills, and four advisors (20%) explained students’ skills in monetary terms. However, advisors were reluctant to talk about students in monetary terms, as this quote demonstrates:

I tell them, if the organization [you volunteered at] raises funds, include the amount. I mean a $1,000, $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 for a student organization, it’s a lot of money and it also tells the employer that you’re able to handle large quantities of money and most importantly that you’re able to motivate the organization to raise those funds [. . .] You’re a product too. I hate to use that term. (A2)

Advisors seem to dislike linking students with money. Employers are less abashed about this link.

Personality

Students used the termpersonalityfor this category, and advisors usedtransferable skills, but their definitions demonstrated an overlap: signaling traits such as teamwork, communication, initiative, extroversion, creativity, meticulousness, detail-orientation, and concentration. One reason to view these as transferable skills is to avoid potential discrimination. Two employers (8%), including one who said personality was important, cautioned against using personality as a hiring criterion because it could lead to discrimination:

I think you have to be really careful with using personality as a criteria. It’s a really easy way to scapegoat applicants to say, “I don’t think Muslims will fit in here. I don’t think Black women over 40 are going to fit in with my clientele.” [. . ..] So I look at professional levels of personality: communication skills, things like that, whether people are helpful and friendly, over other personality issues. (E22)

While items could show personality on a résumé, employers were just as likely to discuss word choice and format as indicators of personality:

Is it something to consider as far as personality goes in the résumé and cover letter? Definitely. And it definitely comes through more than people realize [. . ..] I think you can learn more about the student’s personality from their verbiage in the cover letter and in the résumé. And then also in the way it looks. If you see something that is clearly templated or in a weird font size or not cleanly put together, that tells me a lot more about their personality and work style than something like “I was on the U.S. ski team” or “I volunteer at the dog shelter.” (E21)

Eleven employers (46%) said that personality was achievable and important for at least some positions. Six (25%) reported that personality was not important for the jobs they hired for, although one of those said it depends on the job. In addition, the timing of personality during the hiring process seems to be a factor: nine employers (38%), including two who said personality was important, noted that it was better represented at an interview or cover letter instead of on a résumé.

Fluff

Those of us who teach the résumé will recognizefluffas a familiar point of resistance. After the termfluffreached data saturation, I asked students, advisors, and employers help me define it. Fluff, according to students, is portraying work experience, skills, or achievements as more important than they were—sometimes called “talking up” a position. Twenty-two students (35%) equated this practice with bragging or lying, but all 20 advisors clarified that this practice was important because it foregrounded transferable skills that could make a student’s previous job relevant.

A middle ground comes from employers, who noted that fluff is different than making previous experiences sound significant. Thirteen employers (54%) felt that applicants were justified in talking up previous positions, but fluff was about lacking hard data to back up an assertion. Twenty employers (83%) emphasized that unsubstantiated self-descriptors such as “hard worker” were fluff and should be avoided, as this employer pointed out:

I definitely don’t want to see people say, “worked in a fast-paced environment” if they worked at a run-down Denny’s that had like five people in it. If they can give me some information in the interview to back up “worked in a fast-paced environment,” then that’s something I’d be interested in. (E13)

Ten employers (42%) said something similar about the importance of hard data. Using data avoids fluff while also making a previous experience sound significant: for example, number of years’ experience with a skill, number of customers handled in a given period of time, or number of sales made in a given period of time. However, there is also an ethical boundary; 11 employers (including seven who said talking up was a necessary practice) explained that applicants needed to be careful not to lie when talking about a previous position, education, skills, or awards.

Unprofessionalism

The definition ofunprofessionalismactually revealed some of students’ and advisors’ misconceptions. For 20 students (32%) and five advisors (25%), unprofessionalism referred to items that they (the students and advisors) thought anemployerwould deem unprofessional because of company culture: they specifically named items such as bartending, working for family, nannying, coal mining, dancing at a strip club, and working at Victoria’s Secret or Hooters. Importantly, employers often disagreed with students and advisors about deeming these items unprofessional. Twenty-one employers (88%) did find Hooters and strip clubs unprofessional for company culture; but 13 employers (54%) stated that most of the items students removed, like bartending or nannying, were not so much unprofessional as irrelevant or uncompetitive:

I mean, nannying’s kind of the word that we’ve used, but I agree the positions on here like nannying, or working for like a family business, or sorority or fraternity work because those are things that are easy. I mean, I don’t know another way to say it. Like, you know, a nanny is not an easy job, but it’s easy to find nannying work. And it’s easy to work for your family business, it doesn’t display a lot of initiative. (E21)

The above quote is not necessarily accurate about the reality of how easy these jobs are to obtain. However, it demonstrates that some employers can view these jobs as uncompetitive, so applicants might think of ways to counteract that misconception when they include these items on their résumés. Other employers had a different opinion: 10 (42%) asserted that if these items were the only jobs an applicant had, it was better to put them on the résumé to show work ethic.

Employers were more likely to use unprofessionalism when discussing grammar and format. Seventeen employers (71%) cared about the format and layout of a résumé, stating that they had rejected résumés with unprofessional colors, fonts, or disorganized layouts. Twenty-one (88%) also stated that grammar mistakes marked an applicant as unprofessional.

Discrimination

As I discussed in more depth in my methods section, results aboutdiscriminationshould be viewed with caution because my sample had diversity limitations that might affect participants’ concerns. Discrimination was defined as concerns about an employer not hiring someone based on that employer’s biases. Students rarely discussed discrimination (roughly 10% of my sample), but 11 advisors (55%) and 21 employers (88%) said that discrimination should be something that applicants consider when writing a résumé. However, there were nuances. Five of the 21 employers who acknowledged discrimination’s influence called its presence “unfortunate” or “kind of sad.” Eight employers (33%) specifically noted that racial or ethnic diversity brings important skills to their workplaces: diverse viewpoints, ability to work with diverse clientele, and multilingualism. In those cases, racial or ethnic diversity is an attribute. Moreover, employers felt that applicants should either not work at a company that discriminates or fight discrimination if it happens, which is part of applicant fit.

Applicant Fit

Applicant fitis when applicants try to find an employer that accepts their values or identities. Most of the references to applicant fit arose during discussions of discrimination—as a resistance to the narrative that applicants should fear revealing their marginalized identities out of concern for being rejected. Again, this trend should be viewed with some caution because of the demographic limitations of my sample (see the methods section). Six students (10%) and two advisors (10%) raised applicant fit during Phase 1 of research, so I asked employers about it in Phase 2. Seven employers (29%) felt that applicants should not want to work at a company that would discriminate:

Interviewer:

Do you think discrimination is something students should even be worried about?

E12:

Yes. But, that is not a reason to keep [an item] off [the résumé]. Because if it is a, [exhales] if it is an issue for the interviewing company, then you don’t want to work there anyway.

Some employers acknowledged that applicants might not have the freedom to choose an employer that would not discriminate, but they also recommended that applicants fight this issue:

[Discrimination] shouldn’t be a criterion that people are considering, but as a person seeking employment, you have to take everything into consideration because you need a job. I recommend people take positions where they fight this at every quarter. And then they document it. So, if you’ve put down an award that says “This is what my race is,” you have the right to appeal that. People need to stick up for their rights [. . .] So I think that’s a real concern that I would hope young people would work through and fight against and just keep being honest as they can be on their applications. But if you’re desperate for a job, you want to get a job, too, so that’s something to take into consideration. (E22)

Both these responses, about finding a company that fits the applicant and about fighting for one’s rights, are part of applicant fit. While applicant fit could be problematic if it is used to shift responsibility onto applicants instead of confronting structural discrimination, it is also an important criterion for foregrounding an applicant’s values, needs, and empowerment.

Using Reasons to Guide Actions

Although many studies have examined the effect of résumé items, sections, and formats on employers’ perceptions, many educators move beyond that approach for several reasons:

Viewing the résumé as a list of items can restrict writers’ actions to wholesale keeping or removing items.

It does not help guide actions of students who have more complicated situations.

It often results in contradictory advice about format, items, or organization.

It can make applicants feel disempowered in the decision process. Applicant fit suggests that we need to ensure students understand the power they have in hiring situations.

Instead of being limited to formal features, educators often try to help their students make résumé decisions based on a framework of flexible reasons. However, my results suggested that even experienced educators sometimes misuse or mis-teach reasons, compared with how employers use those reasons. In addition, students and educators can differ in ways that impede our ability to teach the résumé. This data suggests that educators and students could still benefit from having a deeper list of reasons to take more nuanced actions.

Take, again, the student’s experience with the Chinese Communist Party. Her leadership skills were relevant and valuable to the job, but her advisor—who had decades of experience—recommended she remove the position because of discrimination, so she removed the position. In removing it, though, she made herself seem less competitive because her position with the Communist Party demonstrated her most relevant skills. Having a fuller list of reasons could have presented this advisor and student with a middle path: reporting the item’s relevant skills while downplaying the part of the item that opened the student to discrimination (the name of the political party). The student could also use these reasons to adapt her actions across contexts, including in her LinkedIn profile or between her Chinese and U.S. résumés. The process could make her feel more empowered to keep work she had done—her leadership with the Chinese Communist Party—without also opening her to discrimination. To make more nuanced, adaptive, and empowered choices, students need educators to explicate often tacit reasons, and educators could use a richer and fuller list of those reasons and how they interact. The rest of this section explores three approaches that I have used in my classes to explicate reasons and help students understand how those reasons interact: decision trees, annotated résumés, and research reports.

Decision Trees

In my classes, I provide students with a list of reasons, their definitions, and the employers’ feedback (seeTable 3). I explain that the résumé is not a list of sections and job duties. It is not even a list of achievements. It is a result of decisions based on their audience’s needs and priorities—and the students’ priorities, per applicant fit. These decisions should affect everything on their résumés:

The format decisions they make (e.g., using color)

The sections they prioritize

The positions they include

The bullet points they include under each position

The skills and achievements they include

To start this decision process, I group the eight reasons based on how they influenced people’s actions:

Relevance was used to both include and remove items. Relevant items should be kept and emphasized; irrelevant items should be removed or downplayed.

Value, personality, recency, and applicant fit were reasons to include items. Even irrelevant items sometimes stay if they are more recent or show value.

Fluff, unprofessionalism, and discrimination were all reasons people used to remove items. This sometimes-violated relevance: for example, when an applicant removes Victoria’s Secret from an application to another retail job.

These groupings create a starting point based on the actions a student is considering about an item, position, or format. For example, if a student is considering whether to remove something, they might consult the reasons forkeepingthe item before making a final decision.

Once students understand how the reasons influence people’s general actions, I can guide them through a decision tree for their specific situations (seeFigure 1). When a student is debating an item, I usually move them through these questions:

Does __________ show a relevant or valuable skill or personality attribute?

a. If the answer is “yes,” then the applicant should keep it unless it has complications with discrimination or unprofessionalism (see Question 3 below). Personality can leave someone open to discrimination, so an applicant should only keep something that demonstrates a clearly relevant or valuable trait—and those are better viewed as transferable skills.

Is __________ the most recent (or only) experience that the applicant has with this skill or attribute? Also, does the applicant need to show an accumulated length of time with that skill or attribute?

a. This should really be guided by relevance and value. Even old experiences can stay if they demonstrate a relevant attribute or skill, although the best experiences are both recentandrelevant. If the experience is the only thing an applicant has to show this skill or attribute, or if the applicant needs to show an accumulation of time with that skill or attribute, then losing that experience is detrimental. Consider ways to keep the position and, in the future, obtain similar positions.

Is __________ something that the applicant is concerned about because of potential discrimination, fluff, or unprofessionalism?

a. Fluff is remedied by relevance: information is only “fluff” if it cannot be supported by quantifiable, relevant data. To use discrimination and unprofessionalism in tandem with relevance and value, first determine whether the item is relevant and valuable (Question 1). If it is, then identify which part(s) of the position are relevant/valuable, and then keep those parts while altering the item to downplay the problematic parts. A student could consider removing the item entirely or, more subtly, make it more generic to minimize the discrimination concern. But the next question is just as important.

Is __________ an important part of an applicant’s identity?

a. If an applicant is concerned about discrimination or unprofessionalism, they should also consider whether this item is important to their identity. If it is, they should consider employers’ discussions of applicant fit and keep the item (altered or unaltered). If it is not important to their identity, and if there are no other reasons to keep it (like relevance and recency), the item could be removed.

Figure 1.

Example decision tree.

Obviously, determining relevance and value requires analyzing a job ad for the most important job duties, skills, and attributes. Many of us who teach the résumé already coach our students to read job ads for keywords (Diaz, 2013;Fillenwarth et al., 2018), which is the basis for relevance. In addition, it is worth noting that students can start at any point in this decision tree: for example, if their biggest concern is about discrimination, they can start with that and then move to Questions 1, 2, and 4.

Annotated Résumés

One assignment suggestion is having students annotate their résumé with the reasons presented in this article:

Which items or duties show relevance or value?

Which job duties provide verifiable data to avoid fluff?

Which items did they keep because of applicant fit?

This assignment should also include a section where students explain anything they modified or removed out of concerns about discrimination or unprofessionalism. While the grading for such a résumé assignment might be complex, the instructor might consider evaluating formal features as just a portion of the grade; the rest of the grade would be on the quality of the student’s decision process or how well the student met particular reasons (e.g., how relevant the résumé is overall).

A smaller version of this assignment (which I have not tried in class) would be a worksheet organized around the eight reasons. Students could fill in the jobs, activities, or skills that best fit into a particular reason. There would likely be overlap in some reasons: for example, a student might have a position under relevance that they also have under discrimination concerns. The process could help an educator identify upcoming points of conflict, and it could help students prioritize their experiences and plan their document before writing it into a standard résumé format.

Researched Reports

Beyond understanding their own decisions, students can use this list of reasons to better evaluate conflicting advice about sections, items, formats, and activities. Students become frustrated by conflicting advice from sources about how to write a good résumé (Randazzo, 2016). One way to resolve this conflict is to recognize that each résumé item is the result of complex decisions based on interacting reasons.

To help students with this process, I have implemented a research segment into the résumé unit (seeRandazzo, 2016, for the full discussion of the researched report process). Students are required to find three secondary sources, including a job ad they want to apply to. I hold a résumé question-and-answer day where I provide my research results, but they must also interview two primary sources from outside class: career counselors, other professors, credible family or friends, or people who work in their chosen industry. The process is meant to elicit conflicting advice from these sources. Students write a report about the commonalities and differences in advice they received. In addition to analyzing each source’s credibility, students must consider the reasons that their sources were using. Rather than tell students that certain sections, items, formats, and activities are “rules” of résumés, using reasons can help explain the debate behind these formal features. Educators are adept at reconciling complex research results, so this process also helps us retain our credibility while teaching students how to manage conflicting advice (Randazzo, 2016).

Conclusion

Knowing the formal features of a U.S. résumé—its organization, layout, sections, and items that go into each section—provides a foundation for people who have never encountered a U.S. résumé. Indeed, all the students and advisors in my study referenced formal features when describing a “good” or “bad” résumé. But formal features have a limit to their usefulness. They cannot explain inconsistencies or why an employer might respond differently to two résumés with the same sections. They stagnate quickly and across contexts, so relying on formal features too heavily can reduce an applicant’s adaptability. And they do not explain why applicants choose to violate résumé norms, as in the case of applicant fit. Understanding reasons, and how they interact, can empower applicants at the same time that it helps them make nuanced, adaptive decisions.

Although not the focus of this article, reasons also benefit résumé scholarship. They support current branches of résumé research and open possibilities for new studies. Relevance, as the most dominant reason, explains why we need résumé research that focuses on a particular industry, for example, engineering (Fillenwarth et al., 2018), recreation and leisure (Ross & Young, 2005), or certified public accountants (Blackburn-Brockman & Belanger, 2001). Relevance also supports the idea of job-fit studies, which focus on how a person—signaled through items on a résumé—fits a particular job (e.g.,Kristof-Brown, 2000). And other reasons, such as value, might be part of impression management (e.g.,Arnulf et al., 2010;Bright & Hutton, 2000;Kaplan & Fisher, 2009), since applicants can convey monetary value through statements of competence. Moreover, studying how reasons interact can help explain employers’ or applicants’ deviance from a theoretical model: for example, why an applicant might deliberately include an irrelevant item. Finally, the reasons I present here are preliminary, so new studies could pick apart the reasons and perhaps create larger-scale surveys to ask employers (a) if—or how much—they agree with the reasons and (b) whether they would add nuance or more categories. Scholars might also assess the validity of the reasons presented in this article, which could then be useful for evaluating the variables used by audit methods (Baert, 2017;Tilcsik, 2011). One of the challenges of audits is creating equivalent résumés with only one independent variable (Mishel, 2016). Using reasons to evaluate an item can help create more equivalent résumés: for example, rating each résumé on a scale of relevance or value. My study is also limited in its diversity, so having more diverse voices to complicate these findings would be welcome.

Whether in our scholarship or pedagogy, understanding commonly accepted reasons within a genre can help writers and evaluators make more advanced decisions. Reasons can help us adapt to changing résumé contexts; make more nuanced résumé choices; and understand the debates behind résumé sections, items, and formats. The result can empower writers to see themselves as advanced decision makers.

Footnotes

Author’s Note

This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Eastern Michigan University (Approval No. 871362-1); the Institutional Review Board of Texas Tech University (Approval Nos. 504489, 503821, and 504241); the Institutional Review Board of Utah State University (Approval No. 5076); and the Institutional Review Board of Westminster College (no number). Participant comments are reproduced with permission.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Chalice Randazzo

Author Biography

Chalice Randazzois an assistant professor in the Writing Studies and Professional Writing Program at Eastern Michigan University. Her research interests focus on the intersection of practical outcomes and critically reflexive analysis of professional and technical communication.

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