Wording and Your Resume

Crafting a resume can be hard.

There exists an almost endless supply of articles and resources online providing information on how to create ‘the perfect’ resume. With that, there also exists an endless supply of opinions on resumes, from margins and font to how you communicate your experience.

Those small details in a resume are important, however the most important factor is how easily your resume is found online for the jobs that you want. Job seeking and job applying in 2021 are completely online, no matter what industry you’re in or skillset you have.

Here are four suggestions on how to increase the probability that your resume gets found by the people you want to find:

1. Post your resume in a variety of places online

All of us have our go-to websites when we post our resumes. Indeed and LinkedIn are two of the most popular, but there are a variety of other resume database websites out there. It can be helpful to have your resume on a handful of different locations other than Indeed and LinkedIn, such as Monster, ZipRecruiter, industry-specific job boards, etc.

2. Use “Buzz Words” (when appropriate)

Recruiters use resources like Indeed and LinkedIn to find you through buzzwords. Buzz words are the terms that recruiters use to find potential candidates for the positions they need to fill. We often string together different buzz words based on our job profiles. If you do not have the buzzwords on your resume that recruiters pick to search based on, you will not come up in our list of search results. To combat that, one thing that could help from a candidate perspective would be for you to find 1-2 jobs you really like, highlight the ‘buzz words’, and make sure that those are terms reflected somewhere on your resume (as long as they fit your background and experience).

3. Clearly state what you are looking for

One of the biggest misses in resumes is not listing out the types of positions you are open to or looking for. The Summary section of a resume is the perfect spot for this and can be a great way to include job titles, types of positions, availability to relocate, openness for contract or temporary positions, etc. These are search terms that recruiters can use in conjunction with more technical terms.

4. Make sure your resume is ATS friendly

ATS (or applicant tracking systems) are the database systems recruiters use to keep track of resumes they receive. When you apply for a position, often your resume gets moved into the resume database automatically. From a formatting perspective, there are a lot of things that can go wrong in that process if your resume contains fancy graphics, grids, headers, and footers, etc. To combat this, avoid using formatting that might confuse resume scanning software.

There are some advantages and disadvantages to virtual job seeking. In a world where companies are?increasingly dependent on digital recruitment, understanding how online searches are conducted can be valuable regardless of industry.?

Written by?Megan Lykins

Megan spends her days finding, recruiting, and hiring the best technical professionals who can help realize LHP’s mission of creating a safer, smarter, and more connected world. She has been with LHP full-time since 2019 and has four years of recruiting experience. She currently services Southern Indiana clients. When she isn’t recruiting, you can find her cooking, watching horror movies, or spending quality time with her cats.?