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Even if you decide to tailor your resume to a potential employer’s needs but don’t take care to make it short and sharp, it works against you. When long, vague resumes, stuffed with superfluous information reach employers, they have to spend more effort in figuring out the suitability of candidates. Again, if a resume demands more effort on employer’s part, it is likely to go to the rejection pile.

Keep out unnecessary details from your resume, make it simple, credible and short—2 to 3 pages (max.). When you spend more effort to craft your resume, you save employer’s effort and increase the chances of winning their favour.

Interview: When job seekers appear at interviews without preparation, it again makes employers spend more effort. They have to explain the job requirements and dig out all the relevant information from the candidates to assess their suitability.

What employers would prefer is someone who has done the homework by studying job requirements and shows them how he or she fits into them. Least effort for them!

Job hunt: Job seekers mostly focus on vacancies advertised in the newspapers. For employers, however, the route of advertising vacancies, then receiving a large number of applications and interviewing scores of candidates is a route of “more effort.” They would prefer if someone could cut short this process and save their effort.

As a job seeker, if you can get in touch with potential employers either through contacts or directly, you save them the extra effort (and money, too). That’s the reason many smart people get jobs by simply networking and seeking help from their friends or showing the guts to approach employers directly even when they have not advertised a vacancy.

Basically, to enjoy success in the job market, ask yourself: "How can I help potential employer take the path of least effort?" The equation is simple: The more effort you put in, the lesser effort employers will have to put in while dealing you. Always remember, employers prefer those job seekers who help them spend least effort at every stage of the recruitment process.