Using Keywords To Make Your Resume Standout

Question: “Swami, what will make my resume stand out?”

Swami: “What do you put in your resume?”

Q: “The standard things.  I put my name, address, phone, email, objective and my work history and skills”

S: “How do you expect to stand out from the other resume?”

Q” “My background will stand out.  The person reading it will see that I have what they are looking for”.

S:  “In 7 seconds?”

Q: “Well hopefully, they look longer than that”

S: “What if they don’t look at it and a computer decides what they should look at”

Q: ” I don’t know”.

The following dialog may be fictitious but it’s similar to many I’ve had.   I am sure you were trained like I was at some point.  Write a resume and include a cover letter.  Keep the cover letter to 2-3 paragraphs.   On the resume include a description of what you’re looking for, your work history, education, certificates, etc…  blah, blah, blah.

SCRAP THAT!!!! The world has changed. Get rid of years of indoctrination out of your head and think in today’s world.  Once upon a time, people typed it on nice parchment paper, beautiful ivory envelope, people made copies of it, stored it in files, and people may have read it.   MAY HAVE, is the appropriate term.

The world has moved faster but certain things have not.  I’ll explain in a moment but first recognize what has changed.

1. People don’t want paper.  They want electronic files.  Easier to store, easy to find, easy to respond to, easy to share,etc…     Paper resumes are out.
2. The majority of people receiving  a resume are not going to the cover letter if there is one.  They go right to the resume.
3. In many organizations, the resume is received electronically, filed electronically then retrieved electronically.
4. There are so many resumes and so little time.  Whoever is doing the culling process is looking for a short way to get through the batch of resumes so they look for the thing that fits that job description.

OK.  So what is it that both a computer program and a human being has always done and is continueing to do at a faster rate than ever?  Find key words.  Words that they know the job requires.  They don’t need lots of data, they need key words so let’s get to it.

Here’s a job description I just pulled off of our internal job listing at Segula Technologies:

.Net Developer - This is a senior Developer position that provides design, developmental coding, testing, implentation and maintenance of the XXX software program.   Requires the use of object oriented methodologies, VB.net, xml and MS SQL skills.

Let’s assume you are going through the following resumes and the first one you see is:

Seeking Project Manager position.  Have 15 years experience as Developer on COBOL and have a strong knowledge of visual basic, SQL and Unix systems

The second one says:

.Net Programmer with the following skills:

• .Net (VB.net, ASP.net, C#)
• MS SQL Development and administration
• XML and other web-based platforms
• Visual Basic, VB Script

Key Words from the Job Description are:  .Net, Developer, Visual Basic, .Net, XML, SQL,  design, development, coding, testing, implementation, etc…

From the two job resumes received a computer would pick out some of these in both resumes but the second has much more of the keywords.  A computer would easily choose #2 over #1.

Forgetting about a computer, a person has a stack and visually is seeking to eliminate or keep resumes quickly with a scan then go back and review more thoroughly later. Which is easier to read?  Which has the keywords jump out at them better?

In both cases, the second.  The writer understands that they need to put those most important words in visible sight and in the case of a computer repeat those words often, but not too often, in the content.

This article is not meant to go into the best form of a resume, but it is meant to answer the question:  HOW CAN I MAKE MY RESUME STAND OUT?

I hope some of that is answered here.  Make sure you understand you must match the keywords of the resume to the job.  

I did say resume.  Don’t have one resume and change the cover letter as we used to be trained. Many people or systems will not even utilize the cover letter and may get looked at later for any additional information, positively or negatively.