Bite of Advice: Breaking the keyword code
The Suggestion Kitty says ....
Keywords, keywords, keywords. It’s all about keywords. Hiring Managers want to see them on resumes. Applicants want to include them in their resumes. Recruiters want to find them on resumes.
Not sure which keywords are most important to include? Research the openings in your company of choice by visiting the corporate careers page. Read the job descriptions for "must have" and "nice to have" skills. These qualifications will give you an idea of what a recruiter will be searching on.
Be careful … Do not haphazardly "load" your resume with keywords from job postings and only include those terms if you feel proficient in the subject. But job descriptions may help you prioritize or better understand what keywords would be pertinent to your qualifications. Sometimes companies use differing terminology from what you might use, and job descriptions should help you break the code.
Meow!
Suggestion Kitty
12 Comments
Garrett Serack said:
Why is the suggestion kitty so angry?
All the other pictures of the folks around here are happy, or at least laid-back cool. (Hey Jim :)
The suggestion kitty looks like he's getting irritated with all the questions. :(
G
JobsBlog said:
Q: Why is the suggestion kitty so angry?
A: Because she hates you, Garrett.
Just kiddin'. That's just Suggestion Kitty's nature. Have you read her bio? <a rel="nofollow" target="_new" href="http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/articles/kitty.aspx">http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/articles/kitty.aspx</a> She's always been angry with everything. I think that's just the way she shows her love. :)
Gretchen (the unlucky girl who has to live with Suggestion Kitty...)
James said:
Gretchen, it could be worse. My cat is part bobcat and quite often shows those personality traits (though usually to other people).
To me, however, he's my cuddly, evil cat from a relatively warm place =]
billdow said:
I agree, I think keywords are important adding the years of of experience you have is even better. I.e. MS Project (10+ years) This makes it even easier for managers to understand really how much experience you have.
On the other hand, just having scanners search for key words without humans looking at the resumes as well can be a problem. You could be missing some very talent people, just because one or two key words are missing and the flag did not get set to pull the person for review.
What do others think?
Thanks
Bill Dow
JobsBlog said:
Hi Bill - I agree with you in a philosophical sense. In fact, I don't think resumes are the best way to see the true qualifications of an applicant. That said, in reality, keyword define modern recruiting ... whether we like it or not. That's really the only way to get resumes out of job boards like Monster or even careers site like microsoft.com/careers. It's a price we pay for technology.
When I search for resume via keywords, I do the broadest searches possible. I'd rather pull back 500 resumes and manually scan them all than pull back 5 resumes and I hope I get a hit. But you'll find most recruiters would disagree with me. Those are the ones you have to watch out for. :)
Gretchen
Michael Pacione said:
I've always thought it looks a little fake to copy keywords and phrases from jobs ads, and so usually express the qualities matching them in my own words. However, it sounds like this means I could be losing out if recruiters match against ad keywords. Is this copy/pasting expected? Would my covering letter lose out on a keyword search?
JobsBlog said:
Michael - I'm not suggesting you copy directly from ads. I just mean that the ads will help you in the crafting of your resume and the selecting of words. Don't cut and paste the job description into your resume just for the sake of getting keyword in there. If I see "keyword loading" (i.e. a list of key words or other shameless ways of just trying to bet picked up in search string), I'll be likely to move to the next resume. (By the way, recruiter candidates are the WORST at keyword loading. Bad, very bad.)
JobsBlog said:
Oh, and James - I DO NOT want to meet your cat in a dark alley. :)
James said:
Gretchen: Why on earth don't you want to meet my cat in a dark alley? You would probably come back in one piece. Thankfully he tends toward putting space between him and the people he doesn't like. He only attacks on rare occasion (unless it's my mother, in which case he likes to see blood) =]
<a rel="nofollow" target="_new" href="http://www.jameshollingshead.com/cat.jpg">http://www.jameshollingshead.com/cat.jpg</a>
Ally said:
The last point about keyword overloading is very true. While good keyword coverage helps to stay on recruiters radar screen, it can easily backfire in an interview - doubts set in when a decent C++ programmer who claims to also know Java fails to answer elementary Java questions (even if the position doesn't require Java). And it gets worse when s/he tries to spin his/her way out of it.
As a job hunter, you wanna also make sure that more keywords doesn't lead to more ways for an interviewer to "tear you apart".
<a href="<a rel="nofollow" target="_new" href="http://cppquant.blogspot.com">Ally</a>">http://cppquant.blogspot.com">Ally</a></a>
Dan Howard said:
Yes, indeed, modern recruiting is defined by resumes and keywords. Modern recruiting is all about matching, processing and filtering.
Sad to say, modern recruiting doesn't work all that well. I think that there is a lot of innovation that can be done that hasn't been done with recruiting.
But, I'd agree, fitting your resume to the system is what works. That's a good reason to do it.
In fact, it ties in with the more recent article about lying: modern recruiting tunes itself to respond to people who tell it what it wants to hear. Lies with keywords garners response; truth without keywords doesn't. Some candidates may rationalize that being considered for a job and then (possibly) fired for lying is preferable to being rejected for the truth. In the first case, at least, you will get a chance at the interview, a chance that they won't find out.
Technical Careers @ Microsoft said:
&nbsp;I have had some random resume submissions lately from people applying for jobs which they are not...