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The
Importance of
Keywords and Job
Target Research
One
tiny word had been left out of Eileen Hanson's resume.
Unfortunately, this 3-letter omission (fab – short for fabrication) was on
her potential employer's "must have" keyword list, and the oversight stalled Eileen's
job search by excluding her from the interview she wanted with a high-tech manufacturer
in Oregon's Silicon Forest. Eileen
put a great deal of effort into writing and editing her resume, but she made a
classic error: She took it for granted that employers would read between the
lines, interpret the facts, and comprehend the sum total of her experience
– a costly assumption in this case. What
many job seekers fail to understand is that most high-tech employers and large
corporations use resume scanning systems to read resumes – and then store
the text in keyword-searcable databases. Like it or not, job seekers need to build
their resumes around keywords –and "assumed" skills are just as important
as advanced technical skills. If
Eileen had taken some extra time to research her job target (i.e., find
out what keywords were most critical for her field, she might have cut several
months off her job search. Research? Yes, research!
While most folks may visualize research requiring hours on end in a dark, dusty
library, that is not the case anymore. The Net has revolutionized this tedious
task, making it accessible and easy – even fun!
What you need to do is find two or three job postings that meet your criteria
for the ideal job, extract the keywords, and then weave them into your resume.
Using this approach almost guarantees that you'll end up with the "right"
keywords in your resume. How
to Research
Your Job Target at FlipDog One
of the best ways to conduct job target research is at FlipDog.com, a Web site
that uses a new technology to index ALL the jobs on the Net. FlipDog is not only
a great place to research jobs, but can be used for job searching once your resume
is ready.
Here's the procedure:
First,
go to the FlipDog site (www.flipdog.com). Then: -
Click on the "Find a Job" button
-
Click on the state you want to work in (or – to get a broader selection of
jobs, select California)
-
Select a city (or select "all cities with jobs" at the top)
-
Select "job category"
-
Type in specific keywords (see suggestions below)
Click on the "finish" button on the lower right hand side.
After selecting
the "finish" button, a list of jobs will pop up. To get the full job description,
click on the job title; to learn more about the company, click on the company
name.
Keywords to use: -
Your current job title (if you're looking for a similar job)
-
Your ideal job title (if you're trying to make a transition)
-
The next logical job in your career path (if you're trying to move up the ladder)
Also
consider using: -
Specific skills
-
Technologies or industries you're interested in
- Companies
you'd like to work for
Narrow
your search down to 3-5 jobs that are a good match for your skills and background.
Print out the postings, and make a master list of the keywords from all the ads,
placing a checkmark next to those that are repeated. Finally,
compare your resume to your newly developed keyword list to see whether the keywords
are included. If not, weave these keywords into your resume
(in your summary statement, job descriptions and education / training listings).
Once this is done, you can feel confident that you've optimized your resume's
keywords.
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