Magical Resume Words – The Key Words for Your Resume

So, you’ve been applying for jobs online, and not getting any replies? Are you using the magic words? No, not “please” and “thank you,” although being polite certainly goes a long way in the job hunt! These magic words are the key words, or buzz words that your resume must include in order to get noticed by the online “eyes” that review resumes submitted electronically.

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photo by sheeshoo

Addressing Ageism in Your Job Search

I spend as much time as possible online, reading blogs and keeping a finger on the pulse of what I call the “career space.” Lately, on LinkedIn, the “Answers” in the “resume” section is populated with questions pertaining to ageism in the job hunt.

If Father Time is catching up with you, read on for some tips to consider for your job hunt…

This week, a question on LinkedIn reads:

A friend just confessed she is facing age discrimination when looking for a new job. She is very experienced, very professional, keeps in great shape and looks around 40 years old. But she’s in her early 50′s and since the CV precedes the interview, that is what a recruiter or HR person sees even before meeting her: HER AGE.

And that is enough to get her CV rejected.

My answer:

Yes, there is ageism. No question about it….More experience typically equals more pay, and if a company can get by with a less mature, less seasoned professional, why not?

However, the fact is, your friend cannot know for sure that age is what is preventing her from landing an interview…In my experience, the resume itself is often half of the problem, not the years of experience.

If I were to advise your friend, I would also suggest that she first ask a professional to evaluate her resume. If she is sending out the same thing and not getting results, it seems like a good time to take stock.

Once the resume is top notch, I would advise that she focus on growing her network.
Everyone should know that 80% of jobs are found via networking, and not all of those networking connections are “close” connections. Web 2.0 offers so many opportunities to grow a network and to demonstrate expertise…Job seekers should take advantage of them to stand out in a crowd!

While resumes need only demonstrate the last 10 or so years of work, taking years off of degrees is a bad idea. Face it – if there isn’t a year, won’t everyone reading it just assume your friend is older than her years?

Let’s assume that ageism, not a poor resume combined with ineffective job search strategies, is the problem. I’ve written about how to use your digital footprint to make yourself look younger. There is a link in the blog to a NYT article which has a great clip from the Today Show. You may be surprised at the control that you really have when you drive your own career bus!

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Need help with your hunt? We can help you get your job hunt in gear! Visit Keppie Careers online for information about our services: www.keppiecareers.com.

photo by aloofdork

Quantify Accomplishments on Your Resume to Stand Out in a Crowd

So, you are convinced that accomplishments are important for your resume? Good! The next key step is to quantify your accomplishments. The point of your resume is to entice the reader to want to know more about you. Demonstrating how you stand out in a crowd by quantifying your accomplishments is a great way to generate interest.

When you start to quantify, think about the following categories:

• Money (especially as you saved or earned it)
• Time (more efficient, less wasted)
• Amounts (sales, customers, etc.)
• Situations (fast-paced, difficult economic environment, etc.)

What do you think is more interesting or persuasive?

Before: Conducted patient interviews and managed data collection for survey.

After: Demonstrated analytical skills and cultural sensitivity as leader of team conducting, coding and verifying 1000 patient interviews using SAS in deadline-driven environment.

Before: Met all sales quotas.

After: Only salesperson to meet 100% of quotas in down-trending economic environment. Won top award for sales closed (2008).

By contextualizing what you have to offer, you help the reader gain a clear picture of your value.

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Not sure how to implement good resume advice? Need some help to give your job hunt a boost? Visit Keppie Careers online for information about our services, including resume writing, interview preparation and job hunt coaching: www.keppiecareers.com

photo by Paul likes pics

Resume Key Words and a Great Visual Tool

Well-informed job seekers know that companies typically screen resumes using software that searches for key words. That’s why your resume should be targeted/personalized for each job. Re-writing even a little of your resume can help scanning software mark your resume as one to review further!

College Recruiter had a link to a fun tool called Wordle. It describes itself as:

“A toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.”

In other words, Wordle will create a visual representation of your resume, highlighting words that it senses as more important or prominent and downplaying the ones that don’t have much impact. If you are trying to highlight yourself as a highly technical team player and your visual representation doesn’t highlight those topics, you may want to consider re-working things! In any case, this looks like a fun tool to put some spice in your job search. Just think – you can make art out of your resume!

True confessions – I was not able to get Wordle to work for me. It looks like a great tool, though. Why don’t you try it and comment if it worked for you?

Keppie Careers – we do more than make art of your resume…We’ll write it to ideal specifications so you will get noticed! www.keppiecareers.com

Wordle resume by climbnh2003

Thinking of Adding Linkedin Link to Your Resume?

Have you considered adding a hotlink to your linkedin profile on your resume or other job-search correspondence?  If so, keep these tips in mind:

• Make sure your linkedin and your resume match up 100%.  Sometimes, since it’s “just linkedin,” jobseekers are not as careful about dates and details as they would be on a resume.  You don’t want any discrepancies to raise red flags.
  
• Spend as much time making your linkedin profile perfect as you do your resume.  Neither  should have typos or careless errors.
  
• Enhance your linkedin profile.  Be sure to optimize your linkedin materials, as many recruiters source from that pool.
  
• Be aware that potential employers will use linkedin resources to find out about you.  Granted, this is true whether or not you offer the link, but if you have a profile and offer the link, be sure you don’t mind people following up with common connections without your knowledge.
  
• Be careful about what information you make public.  For example, if you’ve asked a lot of questions about job hunting, you may not want to make your list of questions public on your linkedin profile.

If you have a strong linkedin profile, solid connections to colleagues and employers and have spent time enhancing your linkedin image, you will be prepared to use linkedin as a job-hunting tool.

 

Keppie Careers will help you with your linkedin profile, your resume and coach you through every step of your job hunt.  www.keppiecareers.com.

 

Being Consistent

As you continue to assess your resume in preparation for “A New Career for a New Year,” a word on consistency.  (If you’ve missed previous posts, be sure to scroll down to read up on how to target your resume, and for tips on producing error-free job search documents.)

One of my pet resume peeves is inconsistent formatting.  For example, if you have several short-term positions, you list dates as December 2007, Dec. 2007 and 12/07.  There are many opportunities for your resume to miss the mark on consistency. 

If you are bolding your organization titles, bold ALL of them.  Verbs should be in the past tense unless you currently work at the position.  All of your descriptions should follow the same format.  For example:

Organization Name                                                       Chicago, IL
Job Title                                                                           2002 – present

ALL position descriptions should use the same abbreviated format for states.  Your next job in South Carolina shouldn’t be listed S. Carolina or South Carolina, but as the abbreviated SC.  All future references to “present” in dates should have a lower-case “p.”  (For example, if you list a current organizational affiliation.)

These points may seem insignificant, but wouldn’t it be ironic to be touting your meticulous, detail oriented abilities in your resume, while your resume demonstrates something less than meticulous?

With employers and agencies receiving so many applicants for each position, every little bit helps.  Pay attention to how your resume looks and reads.  Dot your “i”s and cross your “t”s.  At least you’ll know that you weren’t passed over for a silly error.

Stay tuned for more tips for creating attractive and easy-to-read resumes!

Error Free Resumes

In keeping with our theme - A New Career for a New Year – I thought it would be appropriate to point out some potential pitfalls to the error-free resume!

Don’t assume that your spell check is a good editor!  How often are words misspelled only to inadvertently form other words? You don’t want to advertise that you were distinguished as the “best manger of the year.”  (A good example for the holiday season!) 

Be sure to read through your resume, and have a trusted friend review it as well.  You never know when “public” may become indecent, or you’ve used “suing” instead of “using.”  The list goes on and on: their/there, and/an, faculty/facility, board/bored…

A tip to consider:  create an ”exclusion dictionary” in your Microsoft Office program.  This personalized dictionary will flag a word as misspelled (such as manger), even though the main dictionary knows it as a proper word.

Stay tuned for more tips on making your resume attractive, consistent and easy to read!