Like it or not, we are all caught in the loop of
modern technology. Place a call to your favorite
store or banking institution, and you're usually
dealing with voicemail and automated menus, rather
than reaching a real individual.
The same is now true when you send your resume to
the human resources department of major corporations
(and in increasing numbers, hiring managers at
smaller companies). Because hundreds or even
thousands of individuals apply for one opening,
software that is preset to determine applicant
skills and qualifications is used to "weed out"
those individuals who don't match the job criteria.
Therefore, to make the most of a job search, it's
essential for the modern resume to:
- Be in a format that can be read by optical
character recognition (OCR) software, if the
targeted company is using this tool.
- Contain essential keywords* related to the job
opening or industry.
* Keywords are nouns or noun phrases that the
software has been programmed to search for. The
more keywords or "hits" the software finds in the
resume, the more likely the document will be read by
a human resources professional. In fact, for some
federal job openings, a resume must have a 95% or
higher hit rate if the candidate is to be given
serious consideration -- that is, a moment of the
hiring authority's time, and perhaps even an
interview.
Sound daunting?
It doesn't have to be when you know the tricks of
the trade in creating this modern resume.
