What a hiring manager looks for in an application review

I wanted to share some insight for those looking for jobs at the mo. Unfortunately there's quite a few tech companies laying people off at the moment, which is driving high volumes of applications for available roles. My heart goes out to all those searching and I hope you land your next roles quickly 💚

As a hiring manager, when I screen applications I'm usually quickly scanning 👀 resumes to identify if the candidate demonstrates they have the key points that are relevant for this role, in what is classically known as the "F-pattern".

To increase the likelihood of passing this stage, it may help to know what I'm looking for in my scan:

❇️ Forget the fancy formatting as it increases the cognitive load of scanning and makes your resume stand out for the wrong reasons
❇️ Provide a customised brief summary at the top with 2-3 points of how your experience makes you suitable for this role
❇️ Use the language in the job ad to demonstrate how your experience is relevant - if it mentions B2B then explicitly state you've worked in B2B (assuming you have of course!)
❇️ Provide the actual URLs for portfolios, etc as links sometimes get removed by the hiring management software
❇️ Put your experience before your education (it's generally more relevant at mid career stage onwards)
❇️ Introduce the company with one line on what they do - market, industry, product
❇️ Include 1-2 lines max on your responsibilities - this gives me insight into which flavour of PM you are, e.g. consumer facing, growth, tech, etc
❇️ Focus on achievements and impact, contextualise these so I get a sense of meaningfulness
❇️ Use past simple tense, omit pronouns (I'm going to assume "you" led that project else why would it be on your cv? 😉)

Let me know if this has been helpful and good luck with the job search.