Use Keywords on Your Resume to Get Ahead of the Competition

Keywords are something you hear in terms of websites and blog posts, but they are becoming vital in the creation of a resume as well. Even if you don't intend to apply with large corporations, you still need to do a keyword check on your resume to make sure that you are getting through to the hiring manager in charge of your department.

Why Are Keywords Important?

Employers receive far more resumes than they can consider. That means that only a few make it to the top for consideration. In low-tech companies, these few typically go through a human resources staff member or a secretary. That person reads over the resume and passes through only those that she thinks fit the bill. If the ad asks for someone fluent in a Romance language, that secretary may not be aware that Italian does, in fact, fit the requirement. Instead it would be important to make that explicit on the resume by putting "Romance Languages: Italian" or some other heading so that the resume passes low-level keyword muster.

High-tech companies now use software programs to "read" their resumes. A resume that comes in through email will be passed through this program, and the program gives the greatest number of matches. That means that you, as the potential employee, need to match your resume as closely as possible. For example, an ad asking for someone with experience in the data access layer needs a response with "data access layer." Though that layer is one portion of N-tier architecture, the computer has no way to know the two terms are accurate.

How Do You Select Keywords?

The easiest way to select keywords is to sit down with ads. What words do you see repeatedly? Some phrases, such as "good communications skills" or "good with teamwork," seem to be in every ad. Pay attention to these internal clues! Use the phrases that you see often and incorporate them into your resume.

How Do You Incorporate These Keywords?

Instead of putting all of the terms in your resume, which would get unwieldy, try to set up your resume so that you can interchange the words if needed. A freelance writer may want to have "content writing" as a bullet point. She can change this point to "SEO writing" quickly if needed for a certain ad.

Another option is to include sub-headers when applicable. Software programmers looking for work may choose to include "high-level languages" under their skills section. Then they can put C#, VB, and the other languages known so that someone looking through will see the high-level languages and know that this candidate could be the right one for the job.

Remember that job hunting can be high stakes, so take the time to review your resume before sending it out!