REACH BEYOND

You have sent out hundreds of resumes and have received only automated responses, and not one request for an interview. Is that common, and what can you do about it?

Welcome to the Internet black hole. That is how Mark Mehler, cofounder of CareerXroads, describes the new universe of job seeking.

With the rise of online company job sites, along with job boards like CareerBuilder and other niche sites, it is easier than ever to apply for a job.

At the same time, it is much harder for a resume to be noticed.

Ten years ago, you made copies of your resume — perhaps on gorgeous creamy bond stationery — and after seeing a job that was advertised in your local newspaper, sent it out, along with a cover letter, in a manila envelope.

Now you can go to your computer and find out about jobs all around the world, and apply for them by touching the send button. Unfortunately, so can everyone else.

“The Internet has had a remarkable impact not only on the volume of resumes being sent, but on the entire job-search process,” said Wendy S. Enelow, executive director of Career Masters Institute, an association of resume writers and career coaches based in Peterborough, N.H.

How does an increased volume of resumes affect the people who do the hiring?

It makes them very pressed for time. The harsh reality is that the No. 1 goal of most recruiters “is to eliminate and exclude as many people as possible,” Enelow said.

The average Fortune 500 company receives about 2,000 resumes a day, said Mehler, whose firm, based in Kendall Park, N.J., helps companies plan their recruiting strategies.

“Now the job seeker has maybe five seconds of the recruiter’s eye to make their case to be hired,” he said.

And maybe not even that. Many companies now use word-scanning technology to help them winnow out unqualified candidates.

If a resume does not include certain words, it lands in the trash.

How can you make your resume stand out from the crowd?

First, a resume must make it through that automated technology. To do that, “People need to be certain that their resumes are key-word rich,” Enelow said.

In short, make sure that your resume contains many of the same nouns and verbs that are listed in the job advertisement.

And include key words that are common to your line of work.

Pay attention to how your resume looks on the screen. Send it to several friends to see how it reads to them. Make judicious use of bold-face type and white space for emphasis and readability. Avoid underlining and italics, which can run together or result in outlandish symbols in the text.

Make sure your resume is free of typos and other errors. When applying by e-mail, there is more of a tendency to rush and to make careless mistakes. Taking special care is more important than ever.

Do effective resumes tend to be structured differently now?

The biggest change has been a switch from an objective to a summary at the top, Enelow said. The summary emphasizes the skills that the applicant can offer. A pithy, well-considered, key-word-rich summary can be crucial.

Is a paper resume passe these days?

At Fortune 500 companies, more than 90 percent of resumes are sent by e-mail or through the company Web site, Mehler said. If you use an envelope and a stamp, you may be showing your age, he said.

Enelow recommends taking a paper copy of your resume along with you to give to the hiring manager once you have made it to an interview.

What about video resumes?

Video resumes are gaining in popularity, but Enelow said they are still mainly appropriate for people who are applying to be on-air personalities and the like.

In most fields, chances are that a video resume will simply be ignored, she said, because viewing it takes so much more time than skimming an e-mail message.

In order to land a job, is it ever enough just to send a resume?

Almost never.

“Your job is not done after you click ‘send,’” said Susan Britton Whitcomb, president of the Career Coach Academy, of Fresno, Calif., and the author of “Resume Magic.” That is a mistake many job seekers are making in the Internet age, she said.

“You must also find some sort of inside contact.”

She said the Internet, in the form of business networking sites like LinkedIn, has created new ways to find that all-important personal pathway to the hiring manager.

The Internet, then, may have brought major changes to the job-search process, but the old phrase “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is as true now as it was 50 years ago.

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