More than a third (36.1 percent) surveyed prefer PDF files, while 1.2 percent favor Rich Text (.rtf). Text-only (.txt) and online resumes in .html format received no support in the survey.

Although a Wod .doc is usually a safe bet, it’s wise to check the employer’s Web site or contact the employer to determine the preferred file format for your resume.

*The 2010 Orange County Resume Survey by The Center for Career and Life Development, Saddleback College, Mission Viejo, CA, Eric Hilden, Career Placement Officer, was distributed by email to 2,000+ employer contacts in Orange County and shared online employer contacts in Orange County and shared online via social-networking sites including Linkedin.com and Twitter.

There is no Candidate Experience. Plato's search for a higher reality of 'ideal' forms was as ethereal as the eternity that staffing has spent (and will spend) searching and benchmarking the 'ideal' candidate experience… without return.

It is time to grow up and let ‘them’ take responsibility for their own experience.

At the end of September, in Chicago, at the HRTechnology Conference, a final 'face off' between Elaine Orler and I will take place. We will debate the merits of 'The Candidate Experience'- a myth promulgated by Elaine and other various do-gooders for hundreds of years. (To be clear, Elaine has not been at this for hundreds of years. She is young, vibrant, competitive, intelligent, and one of my favorite folks in the space despite her delusion that the candidate experience exists and that it makes a difference).

You may, of course, vote for the winner if you are in the audience (although I'm hoping Bill Kutik will figure out how to live stream the proceedings. If not, you can follow the play by play on the twitter stream #HRTech10.)

As you may have guessed by now, Elaine will take the 'Affirmative' position and I, of course, the 'Negative'. I expect to win on the basis of solid argument.

Let’s get to it.

- The Emperor has no clothes. 'Candidate Experience' has no real meaning. The phrase is composed of two words arbitrarily juxtaposed and always presented as so 'obvious' to the reader that they defy a closer look.

It is time to cut through the smoke and realize that candidate experience is merely:

"The meaning that attaches to the emotions and interactions with you and your company from the moment that 'they' have applied (or think they have) forward."

There is no definition that incorporates a standard of good or bad here! There is no context appended to the statement above.

It [candidate experience] is whatever 'they' say it is- not how you may have designed it. 'They' could be Empowered or Desperate, Qualified or Unqualified, Considered or Not-considered, in India or Indianapolis, Millennial or Boomer, IT or Retail, Passive or Active, Entry or Executive, Rube or Sophisticate, Exempt or Non-exempt, F/T or Contingent. And they ALL attach similar meaning? They ALL expect the same? They ALL react the same to similar experience?

I think not. Describing a positive candidate experience simply defies the logic of psychology 101 (unless of course you by into Jungian notions of shared symbols but lets not go there).

What is a great candidate experience for one person may simply be rude behavior to another. As I will point out at our debate (or perhaps even earlier to give my opponent some level of what to expect), the mere effort to add some artificial set of 'positive' candidate experiences to the staffing process may do more damage as it will likely distort the reality of what the job and company culture truly offer and thereby turn off the most qualified of the prospects from even applying (see Restriction of Range)while encouraging prospects who have learned to play nice and little else- a sure fire way to destroy our competitive edge as a society.

- 'Customer' and 'Candidate' are not analogous. Not synonymous. Not overlapping. Not even close.

My esteemed opponent, in her first effort to support a positive candidate experience blogged that the cost to NOT having a 'positive' candidate experience was significant by offering a customer experience cost calculation as proof (The William Wallace effect)!

Now, despite the fact that Elaine's proof included a link to her business partner’s blog on the subject (very suspicious indeed!), I will demonstrate that the notion that customer behavior and candidate behavior can parallel one another conceptually is flawed at the core.

Consider that the purpose of creating a customer experience that appeals to (and targets) each demographic segment's trigger emotions (note there isn't a one size fits all customer standard either) is to get them [customers] to buy stuff- lots of stuff- over and over- stuff that may not be good for the them.

This isn't a 'customer' experience. Not at all. It is simply a euphemism for Sales. The customer has nothing to do with it. The meaning that is attached is driven by the employer not the customer. Lets call it what it is.

And so, yes, if the context of the customer/candidate analogy is to SELL the job regardless of the needs of the 'candidate' who must now live with and consume the job, then the analogy of sales as staffing would certainly be equivalent only its Sales not some mushy candidate experience that we are talking about.

Unfortunately, the result of this Employer driven notion results in a vastly different society than one defined by either the customer or the candidate- perhaps a society that might be...just speculating now…might be obsessed with purchasing expensive products that prevent or reduce disease states rather than living healthy lives and, of course, workers not-engaged in their respective companies after morphing from a candidate stage that was convinced to join sales reps wielding a 'positive' candidate experience.

Whoops!

More to come: Trial by fire and the Stockholm Syndrome