How to Make Your Resume Suck 80 Percent Less

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If you’re not using keywords, your resume is being overlooked 80 percent of the time. Research shows that 80 percent of recruiters search resume databases (both internal and external) for job-specific and industry-specific keywords. So, without a keyword-rich resume, you’re virtually invisible to 80 percent of recruiters.

Just to help put this into perspective: This means that for every ten resumes you send out, you might as well throw eight of them right into the garbage can. If these odds sound good to you, keep doing what you’re doing and good luck (you’re going to need it).

If an 80 percent suck rate doesn’t appeal to you, keep reading. Keywords have the power to transform your resume from a black hole into a neon sign.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there about keywords, but really, it’s pretty simple.

Keywords are:

Specifically related to the job, profession and/or industry
Nouns and noun phrases – They define WHAT

Examples of keywords include:

Hard skills – i.e., technical qualifications
Degrees, certifications and specific educational accomplishments
Special training and awards
Unique abilities – such as “Bilingual”
Notable characteristics of past employers – such as “Fortune 500″
Industry jargon or buzzwords
Specific names of products and/or services

Keywords are rarely soft skills (such as “interpersonal skills”). It’s much more effective to hone in on the concrete THING that resulted from your mastery of the soft skill (such as “long-term client relationships”).

Keywords are also rarely action verbs. So, instead of focusing on how you “managed a team”, rephrase the sentence to include the noun phrase “team management”. Of course, action verbs are still a critical part of the resume, but not in a keyword capacity.

There are a few ways to figure out what keywords your prospective employer may be looking for (and thus, which ones you should include):

Think like a recruiter. If you were searching for a candidate for this position, what qualification would you look for to weed through the piles of resumes?
Look at the job posting. What keywords are used? Specifically, look for the ones at the beginning as they are typically considered the most important.
Visit the company website. Look for powerful words that are used frequently to describe the nature of the business.
Visit the websites of professional groups and associations in your field to find current industry jargon and buzzwords.
Use our keyword database to find the most popular keywords in your field.

Most professionals suggest that a strong resume should have about 25 to 35 keywords liberally distributed throughout. However, many people also choose to include a straight-forward list of keywords, just to make sure all the bases are covered. While this isn’t quite as suave as skillfully weaving them into the text, it’s becoming more generally accepted. Consider creating a separate section in your resume specifically for keywords, but try to be a little more creative for the humans who are also (hopefully) going to read it. Try labeling the section one of the following: