Optimize Your Resume [First ed.]

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OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME

The content, principles and ideas expressed within Optimize Your Resume are protected by international copyright and intellectual property laws. You are not permitted to reproduce, copy or resell the content of this document in any manner.

Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to ensure that the principles within Optimize Your Resume are effective and their eff icacy presented accurately but your success in finding a new job depends on many factors including, but not limited to: your qualifications, skills and experience; the individual perceptions, opinions, and requirements of recruiters,

HR persons

and

interviewers;

your

resume;

your

motivation;

your

salary

requirements;

local,

national

and

international

economic

factors.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME CONTENTS

A.

INTRODUCTION

page 3

Technology

page 4

What you will learn in Optimize Your Resume

page 6

B.

THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS

page 8

C.

HOW RECRUITERS SEARCH FOR CANDIDATES

page 10

Online and In-house Recruitment Databases

page 10

Search phrases

page 12

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME!

page 16

Dates

page 17

Wildcards

page 19

HOW A RECRUITER ACTUALLY SEES A RESUME BEFORE THEY READ IT

page 21

Good Resume

page 23

Bad Resume

page 26

More keyword and key phrase boosting strategies

page 28

Functional Resumes and why they’re bad news

page 30

EXTRA TECHNIQUES

page 32

Headers & Footers

page 32

Word document properties

page 35

The quick (and cheap!) way to see your Resume exactly as a Recruiter does

page 39

Formatting your Resume

page 44

One final tip!

page 45

CLOSING MESSAGE

page 46

D.

E.

F.

G.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME A.

INTRODUCTION

Since the beginning of the decade I have developed a very successful career in the recruitment industry by helping numerous people find the next step in their career and numerous organizations find the best new talent they can. As a Recruiter for one of the country’s top firms I have gained a reputation amongst my colleagues as someone who can not only find people for my clients faster more often than they can but more importantly find the right people faster than they can.

Over the last few years, I have passed on to my colleagues the knowledge, understanding, and techniques that have enabled me to find the most suitable people more quickly than anyone else. In the following pages I am going to show you how to use the same understanding I have to “Optimize Your Resume” so you can get this vital document in front of Recruiters like me who are the key to some of the best jobs in the country!

All you have to do is follow my instructions and apply these techniques: Techniques that mean you won’t have to rewrite your whole Resume but just make a few key changes that will help increase the chance that the Recruiters that matter will see your Resume before they see some else’s!

Each year I look at literally thousands of Resumes and as a result I have developed a great understanding of what makes a great Resume and what doesn’t. Many people out there can write a brilliant Resume that superbly describes each job they’ve had in their career, what skills they have and have developed, what they’ve achieved, why exactly they’re suited to a particular job and what benefits they’ll bring their next employer.

Many of these people will have followed the standard Resume writing advice and produced a record of their abilities and achievements that if read completely from beginning to end would be a concise, persuasive document that would convince many people that they were the right person for the job. This is all fine and most of the

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME standard Resume advice is good in terms of describing the skills and experience a person has but the sad fact is that many of these very talented and experienced people will never have their Resume seen by the people who matter. Not because of the way they’ve described their skills and experience or how long their Resume is, but because of how Recruiters actually look at Resumes, how the modern hiring process works, and how it is intimately interlinked with technology.

Given the sheer size and scale and volume of business these days and the sheer volume of applicants for each new position, companies have over the last few years invested in progressively more sophisticated recruitment process management and database software that is designed to both manage and track candidates through the entire hiring process and (most importantly for the purposes of Resume Optimization) aid the Recruiter in actually finding suitable candidates to approach in the first place.

Technology

Recruitment is actually a very active process for companies these days. The competition for jobs is on an equal footing with the competition for companies to attract the best candidates. Therefore, it is vital for hiring companies to enlist the help of specialized service organizations (i.e. head-hunting firms) that use recruitment technology to find them the most suitably qualified and experienced people quickly before their competitors do. Long gone are the days of a company putting an advert in a newspaper or magazine and simply inviting the best candidates that have applied to interview.

Technology and the Internet has revolutionized recruitment and companies who only advertise for new talent in only one medium stand a small chance of finding the right people for their organization.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME The main questions the facts above raise are:



How many job hunters are aware of how this recruitment technology works and how Recruiters rely on it to do their jobs?



How many job hunters are aware of exactly how Recruiters work, how they work for the companies they are hiring on behalf of, how they make money, and how they search for candidates?

And most importantly...



How many job hunters know how to TAKE ADVANTAGE of both the way the recruitment technology works AND how Recruiters work to increase the number and quality of career opportunities they get presented with?

The answers to these questions reveal that the modern job hunter these days cannot simply write a Resume to be processed solely by the human eye and brain – it must be written for a machine to read too. Now I don’t mean that it has to be written in binary code or like a computer program but it MUST be written not just to acknowledge the technology used in the recruitment process but actually take advantage of how this technology works in order for your Resume to be seen and then READ by a Recruiter and for you to be called and then have the opportunity to listen to and convince the Recruiter that you are ideal for the position.

This guide is designed to help you turn your Resume into a document that is not just a legible record of your experience but one that can get the attention of a modern Recruiter / HR person by taking advantage of the technology they have to use to stay ahead of their competition.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME What you will learn in Optimize Your Resume

After you have read this document and applied what you have learned to your Resume, you will have learned the following:

1.

How to get your Resume to rank higher in searches Recruiters run on in-house and online Resume databases.

2.

How to make your Resume rank higher in a wider variety of Recruiter searches therefore taking into account the different search methods they use.

3.

You will understand how a modern Recruiter works and why and why companies rely more and more on them to find new staff over “traditional” Human Resource (HR) departments - In fact, many large organizations actually staff their HR departments with former head-hunters and Recruiters and pay them handsomely for their skills thereby bypassing the need to pay an external agency for these services.

4.

You will understand how to take advantage of a Recruiter’s process to make sure they call you before they call other similarly qualified candidates simply by reconfiguring your Resume rather than rewriting the whole thing like many other books and guides recommend you do!

5.

You will discover how simple this “Resume Reconfiguration” is and how a few minutes of your time can result in a much higher rank.

6.

You will understand how a Recruiter SEES your Resume first before they read it (If they don’t see it in the right way they probably won’t read it!)

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME 7.

You will be able to see your Resume exactly as a Recruiter sees it using a feature in Microsoft Word and many other word processing applications! No need to spend thousands on a recruitment database!

8.

How I found out how these database systems really work (i.e. from the programmers and manufacturers!)

9.

The ABSOLUTE BEST structure for a Resume that will help it rank much higher in Recruiters searches and be clear to read once they actually read it.

10. The worst type of Resume for both search ranking and readability.

11. How ex-Recruiters are now employed by most major HR departments and how they will view your Resume the same way they did when they were an independent Recruiter! (The tips in Optimize Your Resume are not just for applying through job boards or direct to Recruiters!)

And perhaps the most revealing understanding you will gain...

12. You will understand why it is important to have a Resume that ranks near the top of their search for them to EVEN KNOW YOU EXIST!

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME B. THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS

In the introduction I hinted at how the modern recruitment process is actually a very active rather than a passive process for companies and as a consequence of this, a vast industry of head-hunters, recruitment consultancies, and outsourced HR organizations has grown to take advantage of the need of all companies to recruit the best talent they can afford BEFORE THEIR COMPETITORS DO!

Imagine being the CEO of an

organization that only ever gets what is essentially their second choice person: You’re never going to be number one because your competitors always get the people you could have had if you got there first. This is what makes today’s recruitment market one of the fastest moving, most competitive of all industries - one that moves as fast as any sector it serves.

Ok, on to the recruitment process as a Recruiter sees it. As soon as they have a vacancy to fill for their client on they will do something very similar to this:

1.

Advertise position if necessary on Internet job boards, company careers website, other careers website.

2.

Contact candidates they think are suitable from memory or colleague referral.

3.

And most importantly, where the Recruiter will get more candidates, more quickly than anywhere else is…

CARRY OUT SEARCHES ON THEIR IN-HOUSE AND ONLINE DATABASES

4.

Contact candidates whose Resumes appear to be appropriate. Discuss opportunity, salary, hiring company, etc.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME 5.

Put those Resumes forward of interested, appropriate (skills and salary) candidates to the client (i.e. the hiring manager or relevant HR contact).

6.

Organize interviews & qualify more candidates in the background (typically these will be from advert responses that come in after we have sent our initial batch of Resumes to the client).

7.

Negotiate salaries or contract rates.

8.

Present offer to candidate / organize start date.

9.

Invoice client for agreed recruitment fee when person starts (or invoice on a monthly basis if employee is a contractor).

The most important thing to understand about how a Recruiter works is not just that they have a process that they work to but that they are under enormous time pressure! If a Recruiter is any good they will be working on multiple vacancies at once, often with different clients and usually they will be competing with other recruitment companies for the SAME candidates who have registered their Resumes on both companies’ databases (e.g. through advert responses) and who have registered on the same online databases. Recruitment is massively competitive these days: You only have to look at the number of jobs advertised on the internet job boards to realize how many people are advertising and helping people find jobs. A closer look at the job descriptions, skills and experience listed will reveal how many Recruiters are advertising the SAME positions at the SAME organization! Personally, I thrive on the competition in my chosen career path but this competition means that the pace of work must increase in order to keep up with my competitors. However, in order to outclass my competitors and provide the best possible service to my clients I must also work SMARTER as well as faster than they do to find the best talent before they do. This leads us nicely onto how Recruiters search for candidates...

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME C. HOW RECRUITERS SEARCH FOR CANDIDATES

At the beginning of my recruitment career I used to find that the ideal candidates had already been spoken to by other Recruiters about the positions I was recruiting for simply because my searches on our in-house database or the online databases weren’t good enough to bring the right people to the top of my list. As soon as I worked out how to write better searches and asked the most successful people I worked with how they wrote searches I was able to find the right people to approach a lot faster and I eventually stopped missing out on opportunities.

Online and In-house Recruitment Databases

Before I describe exactly how Recruiters search for candidates I need to explain how modern recruitment databases index and retrieve Resume documents. These principles are the same whether the Recruiter is using an online database or an in-house system. It’s best to imagine these database searches as the same as those run on a search engine where a number of keywords or phrases (or a combination of the two) are used to produce a list of documents (analogous to web pages) that are ranked in order of relevance. These results are produced by the indexation of the pages according to various algorithms (rules), which are designed to give the user the most relevant pages first.

Resume Optimization can be considered analogous to Search Engine Optimization (See this Wikipedia page on SEO for more information) where key changes are made to the layout and content of a website to boost its ranking in a search engine. Just like a search engine reads the text and other data about a website, recruitment databases gather information on a particular Resume via various algorithms and then use these to interpret the text in the document in different ways. These different algorithms have the effect of giving the Recruiter options when searching – essentially different methods by which to reveal the most relevant documents, i.e. reveal the most relevant candidates.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME Theses methods/algorithms can be divided the following types:

1.

Searching and Indexing all the TEXT in the document itself, essentially what the words are in a document and what their locations are (later I’ll reveal how recruitment databases actually index text that is normally hidden and how this can be used to raise your Resume Ranking too! – see section entitled EXTRA TECHNIQUES (page 32) for more detail)

2.

Searching and Indexing the text in the document and adding “tags” to represent the text in the document. These tags are predefined in the database and will include job types/titles, technical skills (e.g. Windows XP Administration, programming languages, “Project Manager”, Accountant, etc., etc.).

3.

Collecting meta-data (data ABOUT the person, their knowledge, their experience, demographic data) which can be used to discount the Resume before time is spend calling / emailing the candidate:

This type of data includes location data, educational level, salary/rate level, whether permanent or contract employment is sought, willingness to relocate/travel to work, information on industry sector worked/desired.

4.

Chronological data – this relates to number 2 in this list. Modern recruitment databases look at the dates around which a particular skill or job title occurs and give a greater priority to key words that appear near the most recent date. Databases consider the structure of the document and are able to work out where dates and job titles are in the document as they are usually separated from the main description of the job. (I will show you later how to make sure your Resume has all the correct dates in it to maximize the benefit of this feature of databases).

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME Search phrases

Now we have a basic understanding of how these recruitment databases process Resumes we can look at how Recruiters use them to search for people to put forward to the organizations they are hiring for:

The main method that is used is what is known as Boolean Logic searching (see Boolean Logic at Wikipedia if you would like to know more). Despite its fancy name this is not at all complicated and uses “AND”, “OR” and “NOT” phrases to define what can and cannot appear in the document being searched for. Most Recruiters don’t actually use “NOT” and only use the “AND” / “OR” phrases.

So what phrases do they use to actually search for a particular Resume? I’m going to use examples from the Information Technology sector, partly because I’ve recruited a great deal for these types of positions but also because the skill-sets and job titles usually fall into very clear categories which makes explaining the search concepts simpler. Don’t worry if the skills and job titles don’t appear relevant to your career or Resume, focus on the concepts I’m explaining and substitute in the job titles you’ve had and particular skills you have or systems/processes you have worked with:

Let’s begin with an easy example: If I’m looking for a Programmer the simplest thing I can type in my search field is...you’ve guessed it:

Programmer

Ok, this seems very simple and it is, but in order for me to maximize the number of suitable Resumes and hence suitable candidates I must also acknowledge that not every Programmer out there will call themselves or have the title of “Programmer”

My list of alternatives would now be:

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME Programmer Developer Software Developer Software Engineer

To include these in my search I have to say I want to have any ONE of these but not necessarily ALL of these. This is where the OR function comes in and my search would now be...

Programmer OR Developer OR “Software Developer” OR “Software Engineer”

(Note the quotation marks around “Software Developer” and “Software Engineer”. This is because these are phrases and I want the database to search for these two words next to each other and not just for documents that contain both of these words, which could be anywhere in the Resume.

NOTE

Watch for and check your TYPING when putting your job titles in: Make sure that you only have ONE space between each word in the phrase, e.g. “Software_Developer”

rather

than

two

or

more

as

with

“Software__Developer” (the underscores _ represents the space - don’t actually type that in!). Some of the most modern recruitment systems can cope with two spaces between each word but some definitely can’t and you could miss out on being in a Recruiter’s search. You’ll probably never know which database the Recruiter uses to find your Resume so it pays to be careful – it also looks neater as well.

The above search is a little bit simple as no Recruiter will ever look just for a generic Programmer, they are going to have to include some more specific skills and knowledge too. Now, there are a wide variety of programming languages out there and the client will have specified exactly which ones the candidates must have had experience with.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME Let’s chose the popular Java and C++ languages and let’s say my client wants the candidates to have experience with both. My search will now be:

(Programmer OR Developer OR “Software Developer” OR “Software Engineer”) AND Java AND C++

Basically, by using parentheses I’m saying I want any one of these:

Programmer Developer “Software Developer” “Software Engineer”

“AND” both of these:

Java C++

Now, if my client wants a Programmer with experience of Java OR C++ my search phrase will be:

(Programmer OR Developer OR “Software Developer” OR “Software Engineer”) AND (Java OR C++)

So, now I’m saying I want any one of the job titles a Programmer may have plus either of the programming languages. The brackets are use to direct the database to carry out each search string contained within the brackets separately first and then combine the results, i.e. present Resumes that feature both the searches in the parentheses.

Recruiters use phrases like these to maximize the number of people THAT HAVE THE SKILLS REQUIRED in their search results list. This is NOT the same as maximizing

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME the number of people in my results list. Remember, we are very pushed for time, almost all of the time and have to get a list of people that is GUARANTEED to contain people with the skills and experience we need.

The above few searches are simple examples and experienced Recruiters who are “search savvy” as I like to call it, will expand these searches to take into account the wide variety of ways people write and abbreviate skills on their Resumes to make sure they don’t miss out on a candidate that could be their next deal or commission payment.

Recruiters are generally very money motivated and although they will also be very service oriented it is worth considering that they work to place people with their clients to earn a living too. Experienced Recruiters will actually save their frequently used search strings so they don’t have to type them out repeatedly, especially when you consider they are often as complicated as this:

(Programmer OR Developer OR “Software Developer” OR “Software Engineer”) AND (“SQL Server” OR SQLServer OR “MS SQL”) AND (C# OR C++ OR “object oriented” OR OOP OR OOD) AND (“Investment bank” OR “investment banking” or “merchant bank” or “merchant banking”) NOTE

Each word has equal weighting (relevance) no matter where it is in the search phase

Although almost all the modern online Resume databases and equivalent in-house systems also have “Tag” based systems (see page 11) they are rarely used as this Boolean technique will almost always bring up the right candidates. It is fast and easy to use with a bit of understanding as we can group alternative names for skills and job titles together and we can copy, paste and save the search strings to a file on our PCs for future use.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME D. OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME! Ok, straight on to the techniques now. The quickest way to Optimize Your Resume for a database is to... PUT YOUR MOST RECENT POSITION AT THE TOP OF YOUR “PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE” SECTION I explained in the last section how Boolean search phrases maximize the number of people that have the skills required in their search results list and now I’m going to give you a tip to increase the likelihood that your Resume will be near the top of that list. It’s important to realize that on a database that may have hundreds of thousands of Resumes on it the above search strings could bring up a list of over 200 people with those words/phrases in their Resume. Now, here’s the useful thing to know... Most Recruiters will NOT, repeat NOT call ALL of the people on that list! “What?” “Why not?” I hear you ask. Well, like I’ve said before: “we just don’t have the time” and even more importantly: It is very, very likely that within the first 20 people we have on that list that we will find someone with the suitable skills and experience. Now, this is because the database will RANK the Resumes in order of RELEVANCE.

Therefore, the Resumes further down

the list (although they have all the key words used in the search) just won’t be relevant – I show you what these Resumes actually look like to us later on! The basic algorithm (rule) the databases use is this: The most relevant Resume for this search string is the one with the most keywords used in the search string the furthest forward in time as possible.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME This basically means that if you have a lot of relevant keywords in your most recent job description then it is likely that you are currently doing the job that we are looking to find a person for.

Pretty simple, huh? Although this isn’t the whole story it is basically what goes on and certainly as Recruiters we tend to look for the keywords near the top of the document, as most people will put their most recent position first.

This is where the standard Resume advice is right and all the databases I know of will assume that the job descriptions nearest the top of the Resume are describing the most recent jobs and experience.

If this is how a Recruiter views time and chronology on a Resume how does a recruitment database work out what is recent and what is not?

Well, like a Recruiter making the assumption that the job nearest the top of the experience/career history section is the most recent, the database does exactly the same thing and works to the basic rule/algorithm that the job nearest the top of this section is the most recent one and the one at the end is the oldest. It makes sense to put your most recent experience first as this is typically the type of work you are doing now and would like Recruiters and clients to consider when they actually read through your Resume.

Dates

A few years ago when we bought a new recruitment database I took the time to ask the person demonstrating their product how the algorithms used worked. Although, he wouldn’t go into specific detail (obviously there was proprietary technology in there) he verified what I had suspected and had worked out several years previously – advice I was giving out week on week!

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME The algorithms for working out what is career experience and what is not work by looking for DATES and then assuming that the bulk of the text near or under these dates is the description of the roles and responsibilities, achievements, etc. in this particular position. So, what exactly is the database looking for? Most dates in Resumes should be listed like the following as this is what the database’s algorithms as well as the Recruiter’s eyes will be drawn too: 2000 to 2003 1995 to 1998 Sept 03 – Oct 07 January 2002 to December 2006 March 2006 – present July 2005 to present day The important thing to include here is a “to” or a “ – “ with dates either side and stick to the format you chose throughout your whole Resume (for consistency and neatness) IT’S THAT EASY! Then write your job description below in a paragraph or so that includes roles, responsibilities, achievements, skills, knowledge, etc. in the usual fashion. Recruiters use these dates when our eyes are drawn to the highlighted keywords in your Resume (see next section).

We have a quick look at the dates to assess your

experience/the length of time you have worked in a particular position and hence gauge how much experience you may have gained with particular skills in this position. Therefore, if you have a particular skill you have developed in a position that you would like to emphasize but are not sure you have used it for long enough to interest a Recruiter or one of our clients then I recommend that you make the description of this experience longer and more detailed to expand on what you know and can do. Once we

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME read this section it will show us that you have used a skill within a context (note - I also recommend using more keywords and phrases here to boost the number of highlights (explained further in the next section) which will further draw our eyes as well as boost your ranking). Now, as I’ve just mentioned keywords... The second thing you need to know about how to Optimize Your Resume is the importance of PRECISION when choosing keywords and phrases... Now, I’m not going to teach you how to write a proper sentence in English.

I’m

assuming you can do that already, but it is important to write sentences that feature the words and more importantly the phrases that Recruiters will be searching for when looking for candidates.

There is a very simple method that takes advantage of how Recruiters maximize the number of candidates that describe suitable and appropriate experience in their Resumes. This takes advantage of some basic grammatical principles that once you have read about will realize how intuitive they are and will mean that you won’t just have to repeat the same keyword or phrase over and over again in your Resume which means once it is actually read it will still sound like a well written document too. Wildcards All the databases I’ve ever used will either have a feature where the Recruiter can tell the database to search for or the database will automatically also search for, the beginning part of keywords or phrases to also include all words or phrases that end slightly differently. This is usually completed via the way of some “wildcard” search symbol like “ * ” or “%”

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME For example I can search for “project manag%” which will bring up Resumes that contain the following phrases: Project manager Project managers Project managed Project managing

If you were to use this technique for the job title or task of “Project Manager” it would therefore better to structure your sentences to also include phrases like the above rather than “Managed project...” or “Was the manager of project...” as Recruiters usually base their searches around job titles (e.g. “Project Manager”) and skills (e.g. “Java”).

Now you’ve absorbed some of the principles it’s a great point to move on to how Recruiters actually see Resumes and what they see before they read it. After I’ve done that I will show you some more ways to maximize the instances of keywords and phrases in your Resume by working to a particular structure...

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME E. HOW A RECRUITER ACTUALLY SEES A RESUME BEFORE THEY READ IT I’m very excited about this section as I’m going to show you in the next few pages something that you would never normally see. Resumes

that

appear

at

the

top

of

I’m going to show you what the our

database

searches

actually

look like to us before we read them and them I’m going to do the same for the Resumes that appear at the bottom of the same search. The most important thing to know here is that both in-house and online Resume databases highlight the keywords and phrases used in the search string when they present the results to the Recruiter (the one I and many other top firms use highlights the keywords and phrases in red, e.g. Software Developer ). Perceptually speaking, a high ranking Resume will have a number of features with regard to highlighted keywords/phrases that mark the candidate out as suitable compared to one at the lower end of the rankings. These are:

A large number of highlighted keywords/phrases generally presented towards the front of the Resume document but more specifically: a. Highlighted keywords/phrases on the first page b. Highlighted keywords/phrases at least within the first two positions in the “Experience” section ( more than two positions is even better! )

Highlighted keywords/phrases appearing as described in the box above produce the following three perceptual phenomena that mark the Resume out as representing a candidate worth contacting about the position being recruited for: 1. An acknowledgement that there are a relatively large number of highlighted keywords/phrases.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME 2. An acknowledgement that the majority of these highlighted keywords/phrases appear in the front part of the document.

3. An acknowledgement of the positions of the highlighted keywords/phrases, i.e. on the first page and at least within the first two positions in the experience position. The best Recruiters I know all use a similar method of quickly judging whether the person is worth calling before moving on to the next Resume on the list. As I described earlier in this document we just don’t have the time to fully read a Resume before calling the candidate. Our competitors certainly don’t have the time either so we have developed quick perceptual shortcuts on which to base our judgments about a particular candidate we may contact. I’ve tested this method with every Recruiter I’ve trained to use it by getting them to divide a list of candidates they have brought up on a search into “would call” and “wouldn’t call” for a particular position. The only time they are ever wrong is where the candidate simply hasn’t put enough of the right keywords and phrases into their Resume: The sad fact is that these people, although often perfect for job, just don’t get called by us as they’re Resumes don’t look like they are those of ideal candidates! On the next two pages I show you just what a well-optimized Resume that would appear in the top part of the results looks like using the search string similar to the one that I used as an example in Section C on searching. (Programmer OR Developer OR “Software Developer” OR “Software Engineer”) AND (Java OR C++) AND “investment bank” Following the “Good Resume” example I’ll add some detail about what happens once I see a Resume like this:

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME

Good Resume

Telephone: email: Nationality: Location:

555 1234 5678 name @ domain American New York

Profile Skilled, knowledgeable Software Developer with over 10 years’ experience highly proficient in Java

Skills Programming Languages

Methodologies

Non-technical skills

Java C++ SQL PL/SQL VB.Net

UML RAD Extreme programming Object Oriented Development

Team lead Staff management Business Analysis Project management

Education & Academic Achievements University of Boston

1995 to 1998

Computer Science

Boston High School

studied Java and

1991 to 1995

Professional Experience Credit Chase

November 2005 to present

Lead software developer for major upgrade of Java based foreign exchange application reviewed Java code from other developers At this major investment bank Java SDK

Java

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME Credit Chase

April 2002 to October 2005

Senior Software Developer for development of Java based options trading application reviewed Java code from other software developers

AN Other Bank

investment bank

November 2000 to March 2002

Software Developer for

Retail Bank

May 2000 to October 2000

Telecoms Provider

October 1998 to May 2000

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME As you can see from the example “Good Resume” note how your eyes are drawn to the highlighted keywords/phrases that appear in the pattern described on page 21. Highlights in these positions mark the candidate out as one worth contacting. You may however, be wondering why I’ve only written out mostly the highlights and not the whole Resume. The reason for this is that, you’ve guessed it: we are only looking for and only see the relevant keywords/phrases at this stage and so this is all we take in when we see a Resume at this stage!

Now compare the “Good Resume” with the “Bad Resume” on the following two pages and note how the position of the highlights definitely does not adhere to the ideal pattern describe on page 21. Although the Resume has all of the keywords and phrases specified according to the search string it would in fact rank very poorly on the search results due to the position of the highlights even though the structure is identical (see also page 28 onwards for tips on structure).

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME

Bad Resume

Telephone: email: Nationality: Location:

555 1234 5678 name @ domain American New York

Profile Skilled, knowledgeable Business Analyst with over 10 years’ experience

Skills Business Analysis

Methodologies

Other skills

Requirements gathering Process mapping User interviews Technical spec development

UML Rational Rose Object Oriented Development

Team lead Staff management Project management UAT testing

Education & Academic Achievements University of Boston

1995 to 1998

Business Administration

Boston High School

1991 to 1995

Professional Experience Credit Chase

November 2005 to present

Lead Business Analyst for development of foreign exchange application investment bank

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME Credit Chase

April 2002 to October 2005

ANother Bank

November 2000 to March 2002

Retail Bank

May 2000 to October 2000

Telecoms Provider

October 1998 to May 2000

Software Developer for Developed new version of system using Java

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME The reason this “Bad Resume” ranks poorly is that is doesn’t represent a suitable candidate for the position being recruited for and the database has worked this out. Now here’s something interesting: if you ignore the specific example dates used this candidate COULD be suitable! This may seem contradictory but if the candidate has gone for forward chronology when listing their experience (i.e. first experience first, most recent position last) then the Recruiter will view this as old experience because 99.99% of the time the first position on the list is the most recent. Additionally, the highlights don’t appear until the end of the very last page, which tends to indicate outof-date experience and knowledge.

More keyword and key phrase boosting strategies

Earlier I said I would show you more ways to maximize the number of relevant keywords and key phrases in your Resume. The easiest way to do this, which also has the added effect of creating a well-structured Resume, is to use the sections similar to the one I have demonstrated on the previous two pages. You don’t have to have exactly the same section titles but make sure you have the same structure by sticking to the same order.

Remember the perceptual phenomena on pages 21 and 22? Our aim here is to take advantage of these to maximum effect so using a structure where keywords and phrases are concentrated in the first part of the document where the Recruiter and database is looking for them will rapidly boost your Resume’s rank in a search, thereby increasing the chances that you will be contacted about a particular opportunity!

Look back quickly at the “Good Resume” and quickly note where the keywords and phrases are then read the explanation of how this optimized Resume structure works under each of the section headings on the next page.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME Profile

The Profile section should be the first thing on your Resume after your name and possibly your contact details. This represents an ideal opportunity to add keywords and phrases to the very top of the document. Include your current (or desired) job title and keywords and phrases that Recruiters will search for.

The easiest way to work out what the ideal keywords and phrases for you are is to look at a job description for the sort of position you are applying for. These will be the keywords that Recruiters are searching for!

Skills

This section doesn’t need much explanation as you will obviously be including specific skills and job role activities (e.g. Project Management – refer back to page 19 for more detail on this). I have seen some candidates who actually include a list of job titles held currently and in the past and this could be another opportunity to include more keywords and phrases. This section needs to be after the Profile section and you should add the skills, etc. you want to be searched on.

Academic & profession qualifications

If you have studied the skill you want to be searched on include it here and put this section after the one on Skills. If you haven’t then you can put this section after the experience section. Most people however, expect to see it on the first page so it usually prudent to keep it there rather than hide it towards the end of the document

Professional experience

In Section D, I described how it is important to put your most recent positions at the top of your “Experience” section because the convention is to put the most recent experience first. Recruiters are most interested in what you have done most recently: The freshest

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME experience is most valuable to an employer, typically (i.e. your experience and business knowledge is contemporary and relevant). Recruiters know that almost all people will put their most recent experience first so this is where our eyes will go: straight to the highlighted words and phrases in this section.

Functional Resumes and why they’re bad news

Ok, time for some bad news I’m afraid: You may have had or have seen what is called a “Functional Resume.”

These usually have long rambling descriptions of skills,

experience and achievements followed by a list of positions held towards the end of the document.

Functional Resumes just don’t work when it comes to Resume databases (or those people recruiting) not because of their content but because of their structure. They lack the context of dates for the skills, knowledge, and experience being described and generally have a diffuse pattern of keyword and keyphrases throughout.

They

definitely DO NOT adhere to the perceptual phenomena I described on pages 21 and 22 and as these phenomena are a result of how the database ranks the Resumes, they also won’t rank highly on a search.

When Recruiters see a Functional Resume it is very hard to quickly see where and when the skills and job titles we are searching for were obtained and how they are relevant to the opportunity we are recruiting for (refer back to Section E for detail). The job titles may appear next to some dates at the end of the Resume but there is usually no detailed description next to these. This would mean that we would have to read the whole Resume to put the detail together in our head which we just don’t have time for. I’ve occasionally been passed a Functional Resume from a candidate that has been referred to me that comes recommended but I always ask them to rewrite it using the structure I’ve presented in this section so that they don’t miss out on future opportunities. I also explain to them why, using the principles I’ve revealed in here in Optimize Your Resume.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME Outside of Resume Database Optimization there is the added problem of how Recruiters, HR people, and hiring managers view Functional Resumes:

Experience has often shown us that candidates with Functional Resumes are trying to hide something!

With a Functional Resume it is easy to hide a lack of or outdated experience, or the length of time working with a skill by providing lengthy descriptions of what was done and achieved in a position that may have only lasted a very short period of time. Putting a lengthy manifesto at the beginning of a Resume tends to distract from the positions and dates listed in the experience section.

Working to the Optimized Resume structure and keyword/keyphrase strategy is the sure fire way of boosting your Resume ranking when Recruiters search for you. In the next section I’m going to give you a number of additional ways of boosting your instances of keywords and phrases that very few people know about. These alone could boost your ranking especially when you are looking to move to a new type of position where you don’t think you can legitimately add keywords and phrases to your experience. In the next section I’ll also show you a very simple feature in Microsoft Word can show you for free how YOUR Resume will appear in a Recruiter’s search!

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME F. EXTRA TECHNIQUES Headers & Footers I’m assuming you’re using a version of Microsoft Word to write your Resume. This is usually the most common word processing package and most people are familiar with it (if you don’t have Word on your computer then make sure you use a package that can save the document as a .doc file. This format is recognized by all of the database systems I know of – .pdf files are mostly not). What we are going to do is take advantage of the feature that Resume databases have that means they search for keywords and phrases in the Headers & Footers of Word documents. Headers & Footers are areas at the very top and bottom of the every page that are typically outside of the margins for the main bulk of the text and are usually the same on every page. See the gray border around every page of this document? This was added as a Header/Footer in Word, which makes it exactly the same on every page. First, open your Resume in Word and then click on the View Menu and select “Header and Footer” like this:

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME This will open the Headers & Footers for editing like this:

Now type in the keywords and phrases you want to be searched on. Here I’ve used similar examples as earlier in the document:

The next thing to do is to select the text and change it to font size 1 and then change the font to white.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME

The purpose of this is to hide the keywords when the Resume is read normally. It won’t however stop the text being highlighted when it is viewed on a database or provide any context. It does however, make a good adjunct to the keyword strategies and optimized structure techniques I’ve described previously and it does boost your ranking.

I discovered a candidate of mine had used this technique a long time ago when I wondered why her Resume had appeared high up in my search when I could only see a few highlights in the main part of the text. I used the “Find” function on Word (press CTRL-F or go to the Edit menu) and I noticed that the cursor kept going to the Footer and highlighting words that I couldn’t see previously in the Word version of her Resume. She hadn’t made them small but had changed the font to white so I couldn’t see them! By using this technique she ranked quite high in my search even though she wasn’t really suitable for the opportunity I was recruiting for!

I do recommend putting your “hidden” keywords in the Footer rather than Header or it can be a bit obvious what you’ve done! They will still appear on the first page of your Resume (refer back to page 21 for details).

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME Word document properties

There is actually an even better way than Headers & Footers of surreptitiously adding as many keywords as you like to your Resume. This method is even better than using the Headers & Footers technique as most recruiters will probably never find out about what you’ve done.

The way I found out about this is similar to the Headers & Footers technique in that I couldn’t immediately work out why the candidate had appeared on my search as they didn’t have ANY keywords on view at all! I was searching on one of the best know online Resume databases which highlights keywords by making the font red and bold. I could see that there were no highlights so I downloaded the Word document to see if I could work out what they had done to appear in my search Results.

Firstly, I was sure that they’d hidden the keywords either in a white font, very small font or hidden them in the Headers & Footers. I ran a search using CTRL-F to see if I could locate the any of the keywords but there was nothing I could see anywhere in the Resume. I was very busy at the time and said to myself that I would comeback to it later to work out what was done.

I actually forgot about the Resume pretty quickly but a few weeks later I was trying to send an email to a client with some marketing literature in it as a Word file but the email kept getting blocked. She told me that they had a filter on their email system that blocked files larger than 5Mb and I should check how big the file was. Now, I knew how to do this and it turned out my file was a tad over the 5Mb she needed but what I didn’t realize at the time was that it would show me what this mystery Resume from a few weeks prior would have in it that would enable it to appear in my search results. To find out how big the file was I knew that I had to go to the “File” menu in Word and then click on “Properties” and then in the box that comes up is the file’s size:

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME Click “File” then “Properties” and this box opens up showing the file’s size:

What I’d never really noticed before were the four other tabs across the top of the box. I clicked on the tab labeled “Summary” and was presented with an interesting series of empty boxes to type in, one of which was actually labeled “Keywords” (see screenshot on next page).

At that moment I remembered my mystery Resume from the other week and went back to the file that I’d saved at the time. I had a look in the Properties box on this Resume and lo and behold were two of the keywords I’d been searching on weeks before!

Now, I don’t know if the candidate that had uploaded this Resume was aware of what they were doing to make the document appear in my search or whether they had simply updated another candidate’s Resume (a friend’s or colleague’s, perhaps because they

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME had a well presented Resume) but what I do know is that Keywords added to this Properties tab on Word definitely get indexed by online databases.

To be absolutely sure this was what was happening I decided to run a quick experiment to see whether this phenomenon really worked.

I used my own Resume from a couple of years prior and added to the Keywords box a string of random letters that no one else would ever search on – in this case “bvxcdfgh”. As soon as my Resume was uploaded and processed (this can take 24 hours with some of the online databases – see page 45 for more details) I would then search for this “keyword.”

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME Two days later I ran a search on this online Resume database using “bvxcdfgh” and as expected, my Resume came up as the only result.

This showed me that you can

influence the search results using the Properties box in a Word document.

You can add as many keywords as you like and the easiest way to hide them is to type them in and then add spaces until the disappear of to the right like this:

This way no one will ever see what you have added even if they accidentally go to the Properties tab!

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME The quick (and cheap!) way to see your Resume exactly as a Recruiter does

Back in Section E I showed you how a recruitment database highlights the keywords and phrases in the search string used that appear in the Resume being searched. Most databases highlight them in a similar way to this:

Good Resume Profile Skilled, knowledgeable Software Developer with over 10 years’ experience...

The slow way to do this is to go through your whole Resume manually selecting each word and then highlighting it in red as demonstrated in the screenshot below.

Now, there is a much quicker and only slightly more advanced way to do this using the “Replace” feature in Word (press CTRL-H or select Replace from the Edit menu) to search for and automatically highlight in red, each of the keywords and phrases you have included.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME In order to get this to work you MUST do the following before you select the Replace function: Firstly, WITHOUT selecting any text choose to highlight your keywords and phrases in red using the Highlight button on the Formatting toolbar:

Doing this will ensure that when you carry out the next step that your keywords and phrases will be replaced with the same words but highlighted in red.

Next, press CTRL-H or select “Replace” from the Edit menu:

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME Now in the box the opens up type in the first of the keywords or phrases you have included, e.g. Software Developer:

Then, with the cursor in the field next to “Replace with:” select “Highlight” on the menu that appears when you click on the “Format” button (see above screenshot). In the screen shot on the next page note how the word “Highlight” appears just below the box next to “Replace with:” (see screenshot on the next page).

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME

Then simply click on “Replace All” and Word will search your Resume for the keyword or phrase you have included and add the red highlight (see next page)

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME

Click OK then type in your next keyword, press “Replace All” and Word will highlight in exactly the same way. Once you’ve worked through your whole document you will be able to see whether your Resume has the perceptual features that I described in Section E:

A large number of Highlighted keywords/phrases generally presented towards the front of the Resume document but more specifically: c. Highlighted keywords/phrases on the first page d. Highlighted keywords/phrases at least within the first two positions in the “Experience” section ( more than two positions is even better! )

If you think your Resume is lacking highlights or lacking highlights in the right places then you need to refer back to the principles and techniques I’ve described in Optimize Your Resume to ensure that you boost your Resume’s rank in a Recruiters search.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME Formatting your Resume

There are a few more things you can easily do to your Resume that will add a bit of “polish” so that when it is eventually read it will have a great look too.

Fonts

Stick to ONE font throughout and choose a clean, tidy one that is easy to read. The most common ones are Times New Roman and Arial. Optimize Your Resume is written in Book Antiqua.

Paragraphs

Use paragraphs to break the text into manageable chunks when describing your experience. They improve the presentation and make it more welcoming to read the whole Resume – a large block of text looks like it is poorly though out and has no structure.

Headings

Use a consistent style for the titles of each of your sections. E.g. use Bold text which is a couple of points larger and with a line under that spans the entire page (see screenshot below for how to do this).

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME One final tip!

This final recommendation is vital if you want to maintain a high-ranking Resume! You can have the most perfectly optimized Resume in existence, with all the right keywords in the right places but if you only upload your Resume once to an online database it will soon drop down the list of search results.

The reason for this is simple: All the in-house and online Resume databases have a feature where the Recruiter can search for Resumes that have been updated within a particular period of time, e.g. a week, a month, etc. The thinking behind this is that we don’t want to speak to candidates who loaded their Resume a year ago as chances are they have found a job already and have simply forgotten to remove their details (this particularly the case with online databases where people forget passwords, etc.):

We want to search for people that fresh into their search and hence are motivated. All the recruiters I know rarely search for Resumes older than a month.

In order to keep your Resume up-to-date on the online databases go on at the very least once a week to show that you have visited the site. You don’t have to update your details just login and the site should register that you have looked recently. If you aren’t sure it will update your details then choose to “hide” your details in the settings menu, save the settings, and then choose to “show” your details and then save the settings again. It’s even better to visit the online databases you have registered on nearly every day to ensure that your Resume appears at the top or very near the top of Recruiter’s searches.

OPTIMIZE YOUR RESUME G. CLOSING MESSAGE

The information and techniques presented here in Optimize Your Resume are the result of my years viewing Resumes whilst in the Recruitment sector. This experience has allowed me to put this document together so you can also have the benefit of it. Please do take the time to put what I have explained into practice and Optimize Your Resume as soon as possible and then submit it to the online Resume databases as well as independent recruitment firms. The more places your register, the better!

The techniques presented here will help you gain an edge that many other candidates simply won’t have as the markets become even more competitive! All of the techniques here are very simple and are based on how Recruiters like me view Resumes and how recruitment and Resume databases tend to work. It won’t take long for you to Optimize Your Resume and reap the benefits it can bring!

Best wishes and good luck with the search for your next career opportunity!