Example: a headhunter is searching his system to isolate appropriate candidates for a hot, new sales position requiring a candidate with 5 years experience in business-to-business sales of telephone - or software-related services. Based on the client's criteria, the candidate must have been a top performer among sales peers, with rankings/awards to prove it, and must have at least a Bachelor's degree. There are certain keywords the recruiter will input in a certain way to search the database for all possible matches: With this criteria in mind, examine the following two resumes... which do you think will come up in that recruiter's search?
Notice that Manny Namischen is clearly an appropriate sales candidate to consider for this position, yet as the recruiter's search is constructed, his resume will not come up. The word "sales" or any derivation thereof is nowhere to be found in his resume. The recruiter may be wise enough to search for the word "account" as well, or may even take "sales" out as a search criteria. However, you don't want to be second-guessing exactly how the recruiter is going to design a search. You want to be a big enough fish to be caught by any size net appropriate to either your background or aspirations. So, it is critical to construct and load your resume with those words, and only those words, which are key to that background and those aspirations.
A point regarding cover letters: as a resume generally covers your past, a cover letter can point the way to your future. Anything substantial mentioned in a cover letter is often included with your resume in the database, so be certain to include the keywords of your objectives and aspirations, just as in your resume you included the keywords of your background. This way, both your past and future wishes can be searched.
In the old days, before the advent of such tremendous information management technologies as KWS databases, one could count on a certain amount of information being assumed or read into a resume because they were sorted and reviewed by hand and eye during a file search. Therefore, Manny Namischen's resume would obviously stand out as a sales candidate. But now, at least for retrieval purposes, the computer reads the resume. Although artificial intelligence has come a long way... databases can't assume.
It is imperative that both your resume and cover letter contain every single word or phrase that could serve to identify you with the types of positions you've had or would like to have. No need to go overboard with words like "woman," "work," and "get paid," but words which characterize specific skills, traits, products, degrees, work environments, titles, and technical and industry-specific terms are highly searchable.
If you dabble on the Internet, you know a bit about how "search engines" work. When web pages are designed, they are coded with keywords that bring Web surfers to that page when exploring a particular subject. Commerce on the web has grown tremendously as more and more businesses are marketing themselves through Web sites. For example, typing "recruiters" into a search engine will literally direct you to thousands of recruiter Web sites. It's the same with a headhunter's KWS database. You, just like a business on the web, want to market yourself to that recruiter every time he searches his database for candidates with your specialty, experience, and interests.
The question then becomes: "What keywords do I specifically need to build into my resume so I'll 'pop up' for that headhunter conducting a database search to fill my perfect job?" Good question. First, do an inventory of the positions you've listed to see where, in your resume, you are assuming that the reader understands something not stated specifically.
The content of a resume is important, but humans read contextually. Build your KWS targets into the context of the resume and the structure of your descriptive sentences so a recruiter can see how the term or phrase she was searching for relates to your background. Contextual loading gives more punch and substance to the resume. If you have performed keyword searches on the Internet, you know how frustrating it is to pull up a document that lists a block of keywords not necessarily germane to that document. So, keep the KWS target words and phrases inside the descriptive body of the resume. EXCEPTION: summaries of software, systems, or job-skills utilized may all be listed as a group separate from the rest of the resume.
