Blog Post: The Key to Getting Noticed

Keywords are words that employers search for when looking for candidates for their position. Keep in mind that HR Professionals are very busy individuals and the more "user-friendly" you can make your résumé for a Hiring Manager, the more success you will have with on-line employment search.
Following is an example of a position listed on Jobing.com
"This person must have a minimum of a Bachelor's of Arts degree and at least two-years of related work experience; familiarity with college admissions and financial aid processes, procedures and policies; and excellent interpersonal, communication, and presentation skills along with strong analytical, organizational, research, and database management skills. The individual must be organized, detail-oriented and self-motivated and able to work approximately 30-50 evenings and some weekends throughout the year and willing to travel up to 30% of the time within the State of Arizona."
If you read the information closely, you will see that there are many skills which this employer is looking for: college admissions; financial aid processes, procedures and policies; analytical, research and database management skills; organized, detail-oriented and self-motivated.
Some of these areas are intangible, meaning it is difficult to search for the word "organized" if you are a Hiring Manager. What they are more likely to search for are the words, "Bachelor of Arts" or "college admissions" or "financial aid" or "research". If you have experience in these areas, and they are not listed on your résumé, then your document will not be selected out of the candidate pool.
What can you do differently on your résumé? You can incorporate these types of words into your document as part of a "profile" or "summary of qualifications". Ensure the words are incorporated into a sentence structure for professionalism. In addition, you may need to change your "profile" or "summary of qualifications" to meet the requirements of different positions to which you apply.
This information is also true for those individuals applying for City, State and County jobs. Your résumé will be entered into their system via an OCR scanner. The system is set up to then search for résumés with the keywords that are in the job postings. Typically, the system scans the document seven times to find the words matching the position posting. It will then rate the résumés in order of the most number of keywords matching their description. If your words are not at the top of the document, or scattered throughout your résumé, your chances of being selected are fewer.
In addition, your résumé must be in the proper format to be read by an OCR scanner. The system will not recognize items such as fancy squares, bullets, underlining and bolding and will usually reject those documents from the system. Stripping your résumé of these items will improve your chances of being selected.