Keywords for a Resume
By Miriam Salpeter, GreatPlaceJobs Career Advice Expert
Keppie Careers
Keywords for a Resume
Have you been applying to jobs online, but you haven’t been having any luck? Stop right now and re-evaluate your resume. Since a computer is scanning resumes before human eyes ever see them, it is important to focus your efforts to get past that automatic screen. You need to be sure to include those all-important, “magic words” so your resume can propel you to the next round of review. No, I don’t mean the magic words of yester-year, “Please” and “Thank you.” Today’s magic words are keywords – the words that represent what the employer expects the candidate to do on the job.
Any job you apply for (here on GreatPlaceJobs and elsewhere) will require a resume to be optimized with key words. Most of the time (up to 80%), computers will screen the resume before human eyes ever see it, so it’s important to target the resume to the type of job you are seeking.
How do you know what words to emphasize? QuintCareers explains that most key words are nouns. For example:
• Conducted cross-functional management for initial and follow-up contact.
• Coordinated marketing campaigns and special events.
• Managed customer database, product updates, and upgrades.
• Functioned in project-management role.
• Oversaw procurement, allocation, distribution control, stock levels, and cost compilation/analysis.
Keywords describe the specific job skills employers seek. You may also consider “buzz” words from your industry to use as key words. Don’t forget specific computer skills, job titles and professional organizations.
My favorite sources for key words? The job descriptions themselves. More often than not, online job descriptions are chock full of key words that you can easily collect and spread liberally throughout your resume. Are you hesitant to recycle the words from the job description? Worried that the reviewer will just think you “copied” the job description? If done correctly, focusing on words used in job descriptions is more likely to make any reviewer (automated or human) believe that you are “just what they are looking for” to fill the job. Go ahead – draw the line between what you offer and what the organization seeks.
Another great place to find key words? LinkedIn. Review profiles of those in the industry your resume targets. What key words do they use? What patterns do you see in the profiles? Do certain terms come up again and again? If so, be sure to include them in your resume.
If you’d like to evaluate how well you use keywords in your resume, try a fun tool called Wordle. It describes itself as,
“A toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.”
Wordle creates a visual representation of your resume, highlighting words that it senses as more important or prominent and downplaying the ones that don’t have much impact. If you are trying to highlight yourself as a creative team player and your visual representation doesn’t highlight those topics, you may want to consider re-working things! In any case, this looks like a fun tool to put some spice in your job search. Just think – you can make art out of your resume!
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Tags: cover letters, Job Search, Resumes
October 21st, 2008 at 4:02 am
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October 21st, 2008 at 1:54 pm
Miriam – What about the newest job matching sites like Realmatch and Jobfox that dont use resumes to match employers with job seekers? I wonder if these new matching technologies that use titles and skills to match instead of keywords on the resume will become the rule?
October 21st, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Frank – You raise a good point. Keywords can include titles, skills and nouns. If job seekers are relying on systems like Realmatch and Jobfox, they will need to adjust their descriptions to maximize a match with the system. I don’t know that any one approach will become the rule, which is why it is so important for job seekers to be aware of how their information is being read.
The fact is, once one of these sites identifies a candidate, the HR department is likely to request a resume. A job seeker should have an optimized resume to use at the drop of a hat, no matter what was needed to apply.
December 11th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
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