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Keywords Can Make Or Break Your Resume

Those who have found themselves unemployed after being at the same company for ten to twenty years may find that the job hunt process has changed dramatically. The sad fact is that many companies are downsizing and no matter what politicians claim, unemployment is on the rise. If you have found yourself out of a job due to downsizing or the company closing completely, then you are going to be in for a shock when you start looking for a new job. In today’s job search, you need to use every method available for searching for a job and one of the best tools is the Internet.

You can use the Internet to upload resumes and to search for open positions. There are many websites that are dedicated to the topic of job hunting. Some are paid by the companies who are looking for candidates and some require the candidate to pay to upload their resumes for recruiters to search through. But how does a recruiter search through the thousands of resumes that these sites offer daily? They use keyword optimization to do this. Just like when you are searching for something online, you use keywords to conduct that search, the companies use this same method. If your resume does not contain the keywords that recruiters are looking for, then you are not going to get that phone call for the job. The following are all the areas that keywords should be included in:

• Cover Letter
• Objective
• Past Experience
• Qualifications

You can find the keywords that similar job openings are using by searching these positions online. For instance, if you are an accountant, you can look up accounting and read through job postings these postings are going to use specific words and phrases in their posts. When you see the same words or phrases used over and over in posts, then you should include these when you are writing your resume. This can be a bit more time consuming than writing the same old resume you did twenty years ago, but it is going to be much more effective in today’s job market.

Even though you are using keywords and phrases to make your resume more searchable, you still want it to have a flow to it and to be readable. Do not just throw in keywords where you think they are going to fit. You need to use them when writing it up but in a way that makes sense. The recruiters are going to be reading through them and even if they are keyword laden, they still need to see a decently formatted resume that is legible.

Using keywords can make or break your resume in this day of electronic document delivery. Do not be left behind because you do not have a current resume that is searchable online. Younger job hunters are going to be taking care of this trend and in order to compete for the position you want, you need to be able to use the same methods that they do.