Canada Job Market 2024-25 : Recruiter on Resumes, Current State & Complete Hiring Process

Why are the candidates they're starting to get a job in this market? Um let's say current state I'm probably not uh saying anything that people don't already know here I myself suffered a layoff last year. Whenever you're reviewing someone's profile so as a recruiter what are the top three things or like any top skills that you want to see in any candidate's profile? Um really depends on the role obviously but uh I would say just being clear about um. And these days there's a panic among students that recruiters they're using some sort What are the key things that we as a candidates we need to know about this particular? Yeah you brought up a good point I know there's a lot of conversation about um whether and how these are actually being screened by humans I can assure you that. And is there any recommendation for the length of resume? I know like generally it's recommended to have one page resume. A high percentage of people can get away with one page but as you get more developed into your career it becomes a lot harder to limit it to one page so. Hey Phil first of all thanks a Yeah no problem at all. And Phil before we ask you any questions about the IT industry and I know the the job experience they're very eager to learn from the recruiter's perspective how they should bring up their applications but before that can you please introduce yourself to the audience? Yeah absolutely so my name is Phil Mosier I'm a recruiter based in Winnipeg um over the last yes probably about six years or so I've been recruiting uh largely in the IT space I'll do some kind of one-off searches elsewhere but it's been largely in the IT space both uh internally for clients as well as kind of in an agency setting. Awesome Phil. So Phil you have experience of around six years so you have recruited pre-COVID during the COVID and this current time right so what what are the common trends that you've seen in this current IT industry and especially like I want to talk about the current state of the IT industry why are the candidates they're struggling to get a job in this market? Um let's see current state uh probably not uh saying anything that people don't already know here but uh it's it's been pretty slow over the last couple years uh I myself suffered a layoff last year as well um now I'm representing talk to your talent group uh so that's that's where I'm at now uh recruiting mostly on IT jobs again uh that being said uh yeah it's been slow but it's starting to pick up I've seen a lot of increase in kind of client activity and having just kind of more conversations whether that's for roles before the end of the year but but largely it's for Q1 of next year the conversations have been. Awesome and Phil whenever you're shortlisting the candidates or whenever you're reviewing someone's profile so as a recruiter what are the top three things or like any top skills that you want to see in any candidate's profile? Um really depends on the role obviously but I would say just being clear about um kind of what you did how you did it and why you did it that way sort of thing is kind of how I explain it to candidates whether that's from an interview or from application standpoint or on a resume just making sure that it's clear um also helps it goes a long way to uh have a little blurb on what the company itself did so I've seen a couple of resume templates that incorporate that and I think that's one of the better better newer ideas that I've seen here it's becoming more common I think it's just a little thing like say it's recruitment agency it's like talk to your talent we recruit in like a variety of different industries I focus on IT sort of thing just kind of have like probably about 15-20 words on what the company does so then I as a recruiter don't have to go google it if I'm not familiar with what the company does. Yeah and Phil you have talked about like it depends upon how like what kind of profiles that you're applying for and if you specifically talk about the IT rules right as per your experience because let's say someone has experience which can be transferred to one or two different IT profiles and and generally it's recommended that you tailor your resume as per the job listing that you're applying for right so I want to get from a recruiter's perspective what does this tailoring exactly mean and someone who is just entering into an industry right for them it might be a bit of the complicated process when it comes to someone who has already switched like one or two jobs in the industry so if we have to tell them like what does exactly it mean to be tailoring your resume when you're applying for different job roles. Yeah and it doesn't have to be a brand new resume every time obviously I know there's tools out there like teal that make it quite easy to kind of have your your resume template and then you change a couple things here and there to kind of match the biggest thing would be making sure that the keywords from the job description are in there so say you're you're a front-end developer instead of just say and it's a job that requires react like just instead of just saying JavaScript make sure that you have like the proper frameworks in there because as a recruiter like you can make some assumptions based on on what their resumes are saying but largely you're kind of looking to to make sure that the person has what you're looking for in terms of experience. Awesome and Phil you have talked about mentioning the keywords right and whenever we as candidates we think about keyword the very first thing that comes to our mind is the ATS and these days there's a panic among students that recruiters they're using some sort of magical tools or ATS which doesn't let their application pass till the stage where a human recruiter is actually reviewing that so from your perspective I want to understand what exactly this ATS is and what are the key things that we as a candidates we need to know about this particular software technology whatever you guys are using. Yeah so an ATS if for those who aren't familiar it's an applicant tracking system kind of like a CRM but for applicants to a job or to a company in general that being said it's kind of like to put in different terms like my filing cabinet it's where where the candidate's information goes I keep like my resumes all of the notes I have on a candidate emails etc are all logged in the ATS and yeah you brought up a good point I know there's a lot of conversation about whether and how these are actually being screened by humans I can assure you that that they are the only time I've ever seen just kind of automatic rejections in the past are for people who are outside of a geographic region so you can have a filter where I'd say it's a job in Canada and it's like we only want people that are currently located in Canada because whether they can sponsorship or they want something sooner than having to wait for the immigration process and all that it's not uncommon to have those be automatically filtered out just because they're not relevant because location okay and Phil like once we apply it goes to ATS and then recruiters they try to shortlist the candidates but from your perspective how is the application process let's say you open up an application on LinkedIn that you're hiring for let's say a data engineer or data analyst right so from your end what's the general process after you post it on LinkedIn yeah so it's usually better I always recommend for candidates or for people that I speak to that ask for advice on it to go directly as opposed to applying on LinkedIn because if you apply on LinkedIn it'll probably take a little bit before it gets actually transitioned to the ATS at least in my experience I've noticed that there's sometimes a little bit of a delay in in the uploading process but yeah does that kind of answer the question or so you mean we should go to the carrier website of that company itself and then yeah yeah instead of doing easy apply or doing it through LinkedIn and often LinkedIn will just direct you to that site and and one other thing I'd point out is I know people get scared off when they see the application number on on LinkedIn where I'll say like 200 plus applicants or whatever yeah don't be discouraged by that that's just tracking clicks for the most part so of those I would say I the breakdown I usually give is about 75 of them probably didn't even apply maybe maybe a little bit less than that so maybe say it's 50 50 and then from that of that 50 percent how many of those people are actually qualified who's to say you do get a lot of people that that just think hey I could do I could do this job but despite not having kind of that that background and Phil you just said very interesting thing that you yourself are looking for the candidates right so if I have to ask from recruiters perspective that currently in job market there are a lot of capable candidates who are qualified for the jobs right and if you let's say upload a job posting on LinkedIn or even on the company's website you will get hundreds and thousands of job applicants in one under 24 hours but still a recruiter like you you are out in the market trying to look for the candidates like even after having so much of candidates in the candidate pool you have to go into the market and look for the candidates yeah largely that's just because we haven't had say it's a brand new job that we're currently working on in a different area that like maybe it's a different city maybe it's a different industry trying to find people that have that direct experience whether it's with a competitor or in the area but that being said yeah like it's the easiest way is just go through applicants first and from there then you know how much kind of go to market you'll have to do but generally speaking from my standpoint I'm approaching passive candidates a lot more than I am active ones awesome so from from your words I'm able to understand like in case I'm into the job market and the very first thing that I need to have is an optimized LinkedIn profile and number two it should be complete reflecting upon what sort of experiences I have is it correct yeah yeah absolutely and just kind of happened yeah having those keywords making sure that it's it's up to date and just kind of showing what makes you unique to to another candidate okay and and since we have already talked about resume that they should be mentioning all those keywords and all the relevant skills right there's one thing that particularly bothers the IT candidate is the cover letter because whenever we are applying on the on the different job postings there are two sections one is to upload resume and the other one is to upload a cover letter so my question is how much difference this cover letter makes and in case I have to write a good cover letter so you as a recruiter what do you expect me to write in in that particular cover letter I'm more on the candidate side of this I'm not not crazy about cover letters myself because they all kind of tend to be repetitive or just you know like they're I don't think they're really indicative of the quality of a candidate every time that being said like you just want to kind of check off the boxes what I what I would mostly recommend would be have the job description open on one half and like your your word doc or whatever you're using on the other half and just kind of go through and like see how you match up to to some of the roles and then use that as your introduction just to make it easier for them to want to to meet with you so let's say it's a again it's a developer job like say it's I have x amount of years experience with this and use it kind of as a introduction to your resume instead of necessarily an introduction to yourself if that makes sense just kind of put the information from your resume into the cover letter in kind of more plain English and so it should be a short summary of your skills and everything and mainly aligned towards how you can make a difference into that particular profile like yeah in that organization specifically and like a lot of the time it'll have kind of the what you'll do section or kind of they'll describe what what this person is going to be coming in and well since we're already talking about cover letter and if I talk about resume let's say I give you a resume for review that for a particular profile right two questions on that first thing how much time do you ideally spend on one single resume to review that if you are like are you selecting the candidate or rejecting that and what are the tops top things that you would see on on a resume um yeah I'd say I don't know how how long I spend I know there's been studies that say it's about 10 seconds say it's probably that's probably not far off initially when I pull one up is I'm going to because hopefully that gives you kind of kind of the coals notes on what the rest of the document's going to have and I'm going to look at a job title company and years of experience from there if those are all aligned then I'll do a bit of a deeper dive because those are kind of usually disqualifiers right it was like if if we're looking for a senior role and this person has like one internship it's like unfortunately you're not not ready for the people leadership part uh like we'll talk in five or six years and is there any recommendation for the length of resume I know like generally it's recommended to have one page resume to make life of recruiters easier so that they have everything in very short format from a recruiter's perspective what would you suggest to the candidates what's the ideal length for the resume I'd say a high percentage of people can get away with one page but as you get more developed into your career it becomes a lot harder to limit it one page so expanding it to two like I'm never really bothered when I see something that's two or three pages that that's usually fine by me when I when it comes up but that being said I have had people that have submitted 16 page resumes and that's uh yeah this might make me sound bad but I'm not reading it like I can't yeah just making sure that that summary is tight um the the bullet points associated with the company are good like you only probably need about three to five per at most uh and then especially in tech having kind of that um that skills section awesome awesome well it was a great conversation but before we wrap up our conversation I want to ask you that as a candidate what should be my top priority so that I can make a recruiter's life easy and so that there's a high probability that you like the recruiter the shortlist my my profile like if I have to rephrase this question what are your top top pain points that you see that the candidates are not following or something uh the the wrong trends that have been followed by the candidates one of the wrong trends that that I see a lot as a recruiter is I'll have someone just out of the blue message me and not really looking into what I do day to day and just being like basically hey find me a job and I get it that's that's what what the industry is but um like it's not uncommon for me to get one of those and it's not even in tech right like like I'll get like a random like accounting and finance person that's like well I don't really do this and like like I'm always happy to to message back and to help where I can um but making it easier for us to to try to help you by like say hey I came across your profile let's see you recruit in tech like I'm actually a data analyst I've been here for x amount of years looking for any opportunities uh to work together or just looking for like kind of being more direct in what your ask is instead of just the general do you have a job for me kind of thing that totally makes sense awesome I think that's it for today's talk Phil and once again thanks a lot for sparing our time and sharing the valuable experience with with me with all the job experience and I'm pretty sure this is going to help them a lot awesome thank you so much