Your Career Via a Word Cloud

Technology seems to provide an endless supply of new and wonderful things. Given enough time, someone WILL eventually figure out how to do things bigger and better than previous generations did.

A résumé is something that, although improved and enhanced through the use of technology, still affords us all the ability to continue to make old mistakes. In my humble opinion, technology will eventually rise to the challenge, and probably will allow us to generate a résumé that is clearly better than we actually are!

A side note about résumés and curriculum vitae:

How we refer to things, and how things are labeled, are subject to change when all of us make the mistakes increasingly more collectively. Meaning that when we use the wrong words enough, the dictionary folk eventually seem to change the dictionary meanings to fit what is the new norm. Eventually, the meaning of résumé and curriculum vitae (aka, CV) will probably be more interchangeable, but the meanings WERE not the same. Unfortunately, the improper usage is already causing the meanings to morph.

A résumé was intended to be a summary of your professional/job history, and would ideally be limited to a page or two.

A curriculum vitae (CV) was intended to emphasize a focus on curriculum, or better stated as your educational history. The length of this document was not limited nearly as much, and could be an entire volume for some of the most learned folk (yes, pages and pages!). A “normal” résumé would be one to two pages, and this would definitely not be appropriate for a CV. Consider that if a professor was seeking employment at another university, a good CV would list courses taught, and when they were taught, and a long time professor would have pages and pages of this information… which is definitely NOT what a headhunter would be looking for in a résumé for a commercial or professional job.

Suffice it to say, that although résumé and curriculum vitae (CV) are used interchangeably in the professional world, rest assured that they are NOT the same thing (at least not currently). However, the improper usage is seemingly dominating the world. Just be aware of the improper usage, and give up on trying to fix it.

Since a professional résumé is the focus of this article, we will officially drop the CV term from the rest of the article. Enough said.

Enter Word Clouds

Current industry publications tend to make a lot of use of word clouds. Although you might not readily associate the term with the concept, there is little doubt that you quite probably have seen one. This article incorporates a simple word cloud as an example.

Although there are many variations on the word cloud theme, the basic concept is to display words with a size proportion relative to the number of occurrences that a word or statement appears. For example, if most words only occur once or twice, but the word management shows fifty times, the majority of the words would be small in size, but the word management would be huge by comparison.

?Job Descriptions

Understand that no job hunting strategy is perfect. Job descriptions are sometimes awesome and appropriately descriptive, and sometimes the actual job differs greatly from the published job description. Using the word cloud technology, one trick is to copy a job description, and paste it into a word cloud application. The basic concept is that the areas that you need to focus on would be the words that show up with the largest size text in the word cloud that you generate. One would then go back and customize their résumé based on the focus words from the word cloud. For example, if management were the largest word displayed, one would make sure “management” was a significant focus in one’s resume. The theory is that the company’s need show up as the largest words in the word cloud, and giving your resume the focus of the largest words, will give you the best chance of making it through all of the pre-screening that takes place.

Your résumé

Another perspective is to examine one’s own résumé to see what focus can be determined from within the résumé. Some headhunters utilize software that scans through a person’s résumé to see what abilities and talents a person has from all of the descriptions within their résumé. This is not something headhunters will typically share with a prospect, so it might be something of an eye opener if you ever get to see the analysis. So, take your résumé, and paste it into a word cloud application, and you will most likely be surprised with the results. Most will perceive that their résumé will have a specific focus, but this word cloud analysis might indicate a completely different focus. Worse still, a focus that you REALL do not want your resume to have! The reason is that people tend to elaborate using the same type of jargon from job to job, which could easily present a different focus to a headhunter’s scanner. A word cloud application can help narrow in on that focus too. For example, if you want to be considered for a “manager” job, but the focus words from your resume are coming back as “administrator,” this is probably how a headhunter will perceive you too! Using a word cloud app will at least give you an idea of the focus that you might not consciously be putting into your résumé.

Bottom Line:

When companies place job ads, they post them with what they perceive as requirements for the position in question. Obviously not all of the requirements carry the same importance level. By doing a word cloud…in an instant you can see what areas are getting the strongest emphasis in the job listing. Note: just because terms do not bubble up in job description word clouds, does not mean that mandatory requirements can be overlooked either; one must still keep mandatory requirements in mind at all times. Putting one’s résumé into a word cloud will help visualize what the hidden focus of the résumé is. And, if you REALLY want that job, you will probably want to make the word clouds, of both the job description and your résumé, match much more closely. Face it, it cannot hurt!