As the demand for the Salesforce technical developer skill set continues, so does the amount of nuances in the recruiting business that’s associated with it. If you’re new to the situation, over the next few weeks, I wanted to share some ideas of what’s happening.

Problem #1 – Resume Factories

As a recruiter, much of the day is spent filtering through resumes that look very similar with the hopes to find a candidate who has the specific technical skill set needed and is worth the time to speak with and qualify. 

1.      It seems that 9 out of 10 resumes I review are close to cookie cutter as possible. The same experience, the same technologies, the same keywords, other than client names and project dates, almost everything else is identical. I’ve seen situations where the only difference between one resume and the next is the candidate’s name.

I’m not sure whatever happened to highlighting specific experience tied to a project’s environment and implementation.   

2.      How about a concise resume, 2 to 3 pages? Not in this market, I think we’re seeing an average of at least 8 pages, with the very similar role and responsibilities stated on each project. I realize the role of a developer from project to project will have some overlap, but doing the same exact set of tasks with no specific client requirements stated throws up red flags on the legitimacy of the work performed.

Common Examples for Salesforce Developer Resumes:

·        Over X years of IT experience, Y in Salesforce

·        Experience in Apex Classes, Triggers, Controllers, VisualForce

·        Worked on various salesforce.com standard objects including Accounts, Contacts, Cases, Opportunities, Products, Opportunity Line Items, Leads, Campaigns, Reports and Dashboards

·        Implemented various advanced fields like Picklist Fields, Master-Detail Fields, Custom Formula Fields, and defined Field Dependencies for custom picklist fields

·        Responsible for writing SOQL & SOSL queries with consideration to Governor Limits for data manipulation needs of the application using platform database objects

Common Examples for Lightning Developer Resumes:

·        Created multiple Lightning Components, added CSS and Design Parameters from LDS (Lightning Design System) that makes the Lightning component look and feel better

·        Built customized Lightning components replacing the existing ones; using JavaScript on the client side and Apex on the server side

·        Hands on experience in converting existing visual force pages to Lightening user interface look and feel to access it with the Lightning Component Framework

Recommendation:

Curtail your resume to add as many specifics as possible regarding what your exact role consisted of on each project, what specific modules within each technology you worked with, what challenges you overcame while highlighting the outcomes of the technical solutions you produced. If your resume looks the same as all your peers, there’s a high likelihood that you are often getting looked over.

If you would like additional guidance, please contact me and we can discuss further.