Do you want to improve your career prospects and raise your salary? How can you show that you are the best qualified applicant for a specific position? We have all been there.
Most companies and recruiting agencies these days are now using sophisticated scanning tools to discover keywords in resumes, allowing them to uncover great candidate matches faster than ever before thanks to technological improvements.As the nature of our profession requires us to regularly verify resumes before making the first call to hopeful prospects, this is one of many ways it make recruiters' lives simpler.
Whenever you are applying for new employment, it is critical for you to include strong keywords in your resume. These allows you to showcase your talents and show why you are the best candidate for the job role. But what are some of the steps? We've compiled a list of ideas and tactics for making positions sound remarkable on your resume—without going overboard and making yourself appear silly or stupid.
1. Scan a job posting online for keywords.
The first step is to check at a job posting that intrigues you and find the abilities and experience that are similar to your own. To keep track of your matches, copy and paste job description into a new document and underline it so you can refer to it later.
When looking for keywords, you may look at many job descriptions for the same typeof position to see which terms are most typically used by companies. This can assist you in determining what hiring managers are searching for, and you can then incorporate those keywords into your resume. You will need to be as specific as you can be because recruiters or hiring managers needs to know exactly what you've done. For someone who works in marketing for example, words such as “Marketing Professional" are inadequate.
Be specific because recruiters or hiring managers will search using specific terms and not general ones and they will need to know who you are and what you offer.
If you are someone who clearly works in marketing, you may look into job titles such as “Marketing Specialist”, “Marketing Executive”, or “MarketingCoordinator”. Take the time to search for similar job roles on the internet andnotice the similar keywords that companies used for your respective job role.
2.Use the exact wording in your resume
Some skills have different names or a slight different wording (Eg: ContentCreation/ Social Media Planning). You should go through your resume and make sure it includes keywords relevant to the position you are applying for.
Using one keyword likely won’t get you very far with applicant tracking systems. You will have to pick out a few keywords and use them throughout your resume. It would be important if you provide some context surrounding those keywords that would lead to an achievement. For example, a Marketing Specialist job seeker might say stuffs like this,
“Leveraged company’s social media branding and organically increasing Instagram followers by 10,000 followers in a space of 2 years”.
But don't go crazy, and remember not to stuff your CV with as many keywords as possible. It might be somewhat off-putting to recruiters if you lie a lot on your resume. (Trust me on this. Recruiters knows whenever you are lying)
Most importantly, don't forget to double-check your spelling! I've had applicants tell me in the past that they are meticulous with their work, yet I've found a spelling error on their resume on multiple occasions. To be honest, it's not appealing when a recruiter notices a mistake in applicant's resume.
3.Tailor Your Resume
After organizing your work experience and skillset, you can begin tailoring your resume using the keywords that you have identified. One way you can mix with your ‘Skill Keywords’ and ‘Experience Keywords’ and placing your resume keywords in the right location.
I briefly mentioned the Marketing position above, so let's continue talking about marketing. Marketing jobs can range from social media manager to product manager and brand manager.
However, in general, every applicant looking for marketing roles must demonstrate a combination of soft and hard skills that represent the job's creative and analytical character. Some instances are as follows:
· Content Creating
· Search Engine Optimization
· Critical Thinking
· Flair in Creativity (Graphic Designing)
· Video Editing
· ProductPhotography
· Project Management
· Ad-hoc logistics such as event planning/ Webinar
The most important thing is to make the skills section an attention-grabbing part of your resume so you would definitely want this section to stand out to the reader.
During the actual job interview, you can highlight your soft skills by showing up on time (Time management & Punctuality), maintaining eye contact (Respecting others by giving attention) and answering questions about your resume in a nice and honest manner (Integrity) to the recruiter or hiring manager. As for your hard skills, you can highlight them by providing a portfolio if you have one or you can effortlessly answer technical questions related to the work during the job interview.
If you can demonstrate all of your hard and soft skills and provide specific experiences from your prior experiences that directly connect to the job criteria. Try not to use soft skills like “team player” and “detail-oriented”as they are less useful as they are not specific enough.
Companies nowadays are always on the lookout for candidates with specific job skills, butI believe that at the end of the day, the candidate and hiring manager must feel that they can easily connect with one another and the hiring manager must feel that this candidate is fit and well suited for the company's needs.
Having the right keywords for a resume is important and it can make a whole lot of difference whenever you are searching for fresh job opportunities. Picking the right keywords can be tricky so try to search online and double check that you have chosen the right ones.
If you play your cards well, your resume will be enough to sway the hiring manager from the first three seconds he or she sees it. So make sure that your resume has all the right keywords. 😉
