Monday, October 11, 2010

Does Your Resume Contain the Right Keywords?

These days, many recruiters and hiring managers use a filtering software that picks out resumes with specific keywords.  For example, a sales professional may want to include things like "account management," "sales goals," "profit," "customer relations" and others.

Quintessential Careers is a free resource for college students and grads. They provide some great strategies for writing a keyword rich resume and cover letter that will get through filters and catch the eye of the manager looking over your credentials. Click the link to read their article.

Not sure what to include? First, scan the advertisement or job posting. Your resume should include some of the phrases uses in the ad, so if the post asks for someone with "territory management skills" that term or something very similar should be in your resume. If you're still stumped, check out Keyword Directory to look for the most searched for terms and their related keywords. I put in a query for "sales manager" and got a list of some of the most commonly-used keywords associated with this term:

Search Term Total 
sales manager 3567
engineer manager designer project sales 2246
regional sales manager 2200
sales account manager 1203
engineer manager designer supervisor project sales 1038
sales retail manager 469
engineer manager designer project supervisor sales 369
national sales manager 346
sales sales manager marketing 326
sales manager account plastic chemical industrial color 310
account manager sales 263     


Good luck with your resumes, and let me know if you see an increase in calls as a result!

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