Writing a Winning Online Resume
How to Write a Resume that Hits the Top of the Search List
Top tips for writing a resume that captures employers searching on job boards & their own resume databases: using keywords to boost resume performance
Selling yourself through a successful online resume is a whole different world from sending out the resume you wrote a few years back. Posting a successful resume on monster, hotjobs, careerbuilder, and other sites requires specific practices that aren't intuitive and cadidates have a hard time mastering.
Here are the top tips for enhancing your résumé’s performance both in online search engines like monster and at organizations that that accept electronic resumes or scan resumes using OCR (optical character recognition) for plugging into their own databases.
Critical for Posting Resumes Online: Add Keywords to Your Resume
If your resume doesn’t have the right keywords, repeated over and over, it’s likely that few people, if any, see it online. It’s a sad fact, but resumes come up based on how many times the relevant keywords appear. So if a hiring manager searches on monster.com for a software developer in Baltimore, he looks at top batch of resumes on the list – there may be a thousand, but he probably only sees the top 30-50. And those are the resumes with the most keywords. If you wrote your own resume, one thing is certain: There are not enough keywords in your resume. No one puts enough keywords in their own resume.
The Critical Keywords to Repeat: Job Titles & Job Descriptions
When recruiters, executive headhunters, hiring managers, and HR staffers search online for candidate resumes, they use words and phrases representing the major elements of the job. Keywords are not words like “cross-functional,” “multi-tasking,” “interpersonal skills,” or other general descriptive phrases. Those are good to have somewhere in your resume (if relevant), but they only need appear once or twice at most.
Instead, your resume must the repeat basic, core search terms employers and headhunters use to find candidates in your position. First: Job titles (software developer, sales manager, creative director, business analyst, etc.). Second: Job descriptions (software development, sales management, creative direction, business process analysis). These should be repeated in your résumé’s headline, the opening section, and every job description, wherever you can possibly squeeze them in.
The Tricky Part
Obviously, the trick is, as a candidate, you don’t know what particular keywords the employer of your dreams is going to use. So to cover your bases, you must include every synonym, comparative title, and parallel job description you can think of.
For example, software developer is a common title, and a good one to list. But while one company uses this title, others may use: programmer, programmer analyst, software engineer, web developer. (Don't go repeating some job-specific title like Software Spec B. This will get you nowhere.)
To take another example, for sales, your dream employer will certainly include sales as a keyword, so this should be repeated 10-15 times (remember, no one puts enough keywords in their own resume). But various employers also use their own terms, so you have to squeeze them in too: account manager (or major, national, or key account manager), account executive, sales representative... you get the idea. If you didn't hold these actual titles, add phrases that include them into your job descriptions.
Here's an example of a good, keyword-loaded opening line for a job description: "Promoted from Software Developer 1 to Software Developer 2 to serve as lead programmer / analyst for major software development / software engineering projects.
Resume Qualifications Summaries
Another way to up your keyword count - add an opening summary. This allows the resume to highlight your diverse skill set and most relevant strengths immediately; it also offers another opportunity to reiterate major keywords.
Bulleted Resume Keyword Lists
You can also include additional list of specific expertise. This is a perfect way to showcase your skills, and another opportunity to repeat keywords. The best way is in a table, so you can list 3-4 keywords on each line, while still presenting an aesthetically pleasing and organized appearance.
Follow these simple resume tips and you're certain to increase your results!
