Career News   

Keywords can help get your resume read
Linda Matias, President, Careerstrides.com

NEW YORK, NY -- Fluff. That is what most job seekers believe keywords are on a resume - something that takes up white space. The reality is, however, that keywords are an integral part of the resume process for the following reasons:

1) Most resumes today aren't initially read by human eyes, but rather by a scanning system. This is how this works: a clerk at the hiring organization scans resumes into a computer. When a position becomes available, a Human Resources Representative goes into the computer system and punches in the appropriate keywords. The resumes that are retrieved by the computer dictate who is called in for interviews. This means that you can conceivably qualify for a position but your resume may never be reviewed because it lacked the right keywords. Therefore, you may never be called in for an interview.

2) When searching online, decision-makers search for prime candidates using keywords. To help you visualize how the process works, consider how you search on the Internet. You search for what you are looking for using a specific keyword, and the websites that most closely match your specific requirements will appear on the first page. It's no different when hiring managers search for qualified candidates on online job boards. They too input specific keywords, and the resumes that match their specific request are the ones that appear in their search results.