Keywords in Your Resume
With the Internet playing such an important role in the job search these days, you have to make some adjustments to your resume to ensure that employers can find your resume when they search for it. Whether the employer is using a text reader to search resumes on file or using a search engine like Google or just searching the resumes on monster.com, you can be assured that keyword density plays an important part in finding the resume.
I’ve seen some resume writers just put a huge list of keywords at the bottom of the resume. While that might be successful in boolean search, its not a very tactful way of doing it. Keywords can and should be repeated in the resume using some logic. Don’t be overly spammy about it. It should read natural, but the occurrence of your main keyword should be relatively high.
As an example, a hands on IT professional these days should always have a listing of technical skills that includes their knowledge of programming languages, systems, software, development tools, hardware, etc. Use common sense. If you are programmer, you don’t have to make an extensive list of hardware, but make sure you list the languages and development environments you work in and make sure to include that same information in each of your job descriptions. This can apply to any type of job position.
In many of the examples on Resume-Resource.com, you will see a “Skills” or “Qualification Highlights” section that simply lists key skills. A few years ago, we had a developer that struggled to get interviews and his skill set was impressive. We suggested not only to build a technical skills section, but to include a title at the top of the resume “Java, C++ Developer” and made sure that we mentioned Java in every description. The good news… his phone rang off the hook. The bad news. After he was hired, he spent a month deleting his resumes that he posted on the web so people would stop calling him. Nevertheless, a small price to pay for a great job.
The blog post linked below provides further discussion on the topic of improving the keyword relevancy and density in your resume.
