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blog - the resume keyword game
posted by witten on September 07, 2007
Slogging through all the pics and video links on Reddit (or as my wife likes to call the site, "Sawit"), I came across an actual textual article with words and such. It was titled "Why your resume annoys employers" (http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/worklife/08/29/cb.resume.irks/index.html). As can be expected of anything from Careerbuilder, the article is fairly worthless, and full of well-duh resume suggestions like "...your résumé could do without: 1. Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors." No shit! I'm glad I checked Careerbuilder before sending out my resume, because I thought spelling mistakes would make me stand out and also demonstrate my creativity!Anyway, the reason I'm writing about this is because the image included with the article is absolutely priceless (http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2007/LIVING/worklife/08/29/cb.resume.irks/art_resume_irks.jpg). Amid the text of the article quoting HR experts about their resume pet peeves is an image of a resume-scanning machine, which appears to be picking keywords out of the resume and ignoring all other text.This is mildly amusing, because while the HR experts are trying to tell us that we have to do this and that to make our resumes look "professional", what they're not telling us is that 99% of successful resume writing is coming up with keywords that the HR computer is looking for. Then, once the computer has found acceptable keywords, you need the right buzzwords to get past the human HR resume filter.But the image embedded in the article is slyly revealing this secret of the keywords, a secret that the actual article text never mentions. Oh, sweet, sweet juxtaposition!So yeah, spell-checking your resume isn't a bad idea. And it's probably prudent to skip the perfume/cologne spritz. But these foibles pale in comparison to the importance of having the correct keywords in your resume. Read the job description, match your resume to its keywords, and you'll have a better chance of getting your foot in the door than anyone who merely follows expert resume advice and neglects to play the keyword game.