Standing out on the Big

Boards: Learning How

Keywords Can Help Your
Resume Get Recognized

You’ve written a compelling resume and posted it on several job boards. Yet

when you pull up the resumes in your job category, you see hundreds of

people with your same level of experience and skill set.

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

Recruiters and hiring professionals use keyword searches to find candidates

to match their needs. Resumes are actually ranked online by the number of

keywords they contain, so it pays to think hard about how to include

keywords in your CV.

Resumes have traditionally focused on action verbs, such as directed,

managed, and delivered. A good keyword resume will focus on lots of

frequently searched words, most of them nouns. For instance, a public

relations company may be looking for communications skills, communicator,

degree, public relations, marketing, write, strategy, buzz, buzzword, and

communications. Don’t forget to use acronyms for keywords, such as PR, in

your resume.

Also focus on keywords that describe your skills – marketing campaign,

Microsoft, press release¸ and marketing collateral. Use buzzwords that are

common to your industry.

The best way to write a keyword resume is to search for employment ads

and appropriate crucial words they contain. You can also find relevant

keywords at professional association Web sites, headhunter Web sites, and

job boards.

If you want to work for a particular company, scour its Web site to find

keywords describing its corporate culture. You can also find keywords in news

stories about industries, trends, and companies.

It’s a good idea to look at resumes from other candidates and job ads to

ensure that you’ve covered all of the possible descriptions of potential

positions. Different companies may label the same job differently; you want

to be certain that if an opportunity arises, you are considered for it.

 Many recruiters recommend creating a “key skills” section at the top of your

resume. Use this stand-alone component to list all keywords that you want

your resume to include, separated by commas or periods. This section will

help the keywords from getting lost in the text of the resume, and also aid

hiring professionals by giving them an at-a-glance list of your qualifications. If

the terms fit their needs, your resume will probably get a more careful

inspection.

Be careful not to list too many keywords in your “key skills” section. At

some point, too much is just too much.

Using keywords in resumes just makes sense. Job seekers are no longer

confined to searching for jobs by perusing their local newspapers or

employment guides. Because most employers are advertising for candidates

online, candidates must be prepared to deal with potentially hundreds of

rivals. Without keywords driving your CV to the top of the pack, you can

pretty much rest assured that it’s not going to get seen by key decision

makers.