A Recession-Proof Resume?

A recent Quora question asked: What 3 skills should you have if you want your resume to be recession-proof?

And that was such an interesting question. For me at least, I had always considered resumes to be things that were pretty much copy & paste. Find the template for our profession, add our experiences, and maybe pretty it up here and there within good taste, but there wasn’t much else to do. Sure there were some hacks like trying to mimic the vocabulary the job posting you’re going for has as much as possible, but outside of that and other “lifehack” tips to maximize your chances with a parsing algorithm — there wasn’t much else to optimize for.

But thinking on it a bit more, I realized this conclusion of mine was pretty shallow. Because we do actually modify and customize our resumes to quite a great deal. Countries, companies, rank, and culture — each of them have us either subconsciously or carefully refining and crafting our messages in a certain way.

So though I still believe that there is not a necessary “Recession Resume” that can be said to be entirely crafted for job hunting only during a recession, I do think that there are some tweaks we can do to slightly increase our chances during:

1. Spotlighted Traits:
   In general, companies always want to see things like leadership, proactiveness, and all sorts of other positive soft-skill qualities. Part of it is culture fit, but another part is also that some professions will require specific personality traits to succeed. For times in recession then, it makes sense that recruiters and teams may consciously or unconsciously choose to prioritize Resourcefulness, Ownership, and Dedication. For resourcefulness especially, the company will be trying to make do with less more than ever. They’ll want to know that you can too.
2. Resource-Specific Achievements:
   Somewhat inline with traits, but specifically with achievements. Because companies will be looking more carefully at their bottomline than ever, they’ll want to make sure that not only do you say you have the traits that can let you help them with that effort — but that you have the historical proof that you’ve done so. If you have examples where you’ve been able to decrease costs, ship something on-time/ahead of expectation, or increase revenue, put that upfront and yell it out.
3. Employment Status:
   Unfortunately, people always want what others have. And that applies to companies too. Being currently employed signals (whether rightly or wrongly) to potential employers that you’ve already been vetted to some degree by your current and previous employer. Moreover, if its during a recession, then it means to them that you were also seen as important or valuable enough to be kept on through the reception and haven’t had any downtime where your skills may have gotten rusted. Unfortunately, this is one field where you don’t have much control over. Especially since many applying are applying for the very fact that they aren’t employed.
   This is however, mitigated by engaging in some sort of project or volunteer service. Though it wouldn’t be the same as a standard term of employment or its status, it would be close enough to show that you’ve been keeping busy and your skills up to date.

Even then, there is no magic bullet that make a resume vastly more successful than another during a recession. At least, nothing that is pure text or pixels. It’s important to note that recession or not, the resumes that jump to the front of the line are more often from referrals and recruiters. So perhaps the true Recession-Proof resume as a friend email to the current recruiters and connections you know who work there. Just like they are in the good times too.