Explaining redundancy on resume

Making the most of your resume after a redundancy is key to job hunting success say recruitment experts.

Howard Searle, director of recruitment company Career Path Pty Ltd says “the majority of people” in the modern workforce will experience a redundancy at some point in their career.

“No industry is safe and no person is either,” he warned.

Starting the job hunting process means updating your resume with information about duties and achievements in your latest job and Mr Sealre says this should also include why you were made redundant.

“A redundancy listed on your resume is not necessarily a comment on you it is a reflection of the economic circumstance of an employer,” he said.

“Keep your resume honest, clear, concise and attractive to potential employers and the phone will ring. 

“Don’t cover up a redundancy on your resume – it will come back to haunt you,” he said.

Rob Davidson, founder and joint managing partner of Davidson Recruitment says people who have been retrenched should be making their resumes stand out from the competition.

“In boom times if you had relevant experience and a heart beat a recruiter would see you. Now they are being inundated with CVs. Seven to 15 relevant CVs has gone to 200 CVs particularly at middle management level which often gets retrenched first.”

Mr Davidson said “the lost art” of resume writing would become of “paramount” importance again.

“A CV is an important marketing document and people generally form their first impressions [of a candidate] from their CV, so if you’re spending less than 20 hours putting it together then it’s not good enough.”

His advice was to make sure the achievements on a resume “leap out” at the recruiter and to provide objective evidence that any retrenchment was purely the result of the economic environment.

Mr Davidson also advised getting references in order “on the way out” of a previous job.

“Get as many written references as you can as the referee might not be there in another month,” he said.

“Make sure that referees speak specifically about you and your achievements in your role and that they don’t generalise. You also want them to emphasize that the decision to make you redundant was reluctant and no reflection on your performance,” he advised.”

Career coach and expert resume writer, Karalyn Brown, says it is important job applicants use the correct terminology to describe their job loss on their resume. Candidates should also make it clear they lost their job as part of a bigger cut back of staff.

“Don’t write, ‘I’ve been made redundant,’ as it’s not you but the role that has been made redundant. You should say, ‘I was retrenched’ and then refer to the other people who were made redundant so; “I was retrenched along with a number of people in my department’,” says Ms Brown.

See CareerOne.com.au’s related articles on “Explaining a redundancy on a resume” and “Explaining a redundancy at a job interview”