From Brand-Yourself.com
Today we have a special guest post from Ozzie Saunds. Ozzie is an experienced Career Specialist who has worked with North America’s largest job board and the world’s second largest international recruitment firm. Currently the founder/owner of a successful recruitment
organization, he is committed to continuing his efforts of maximizing the potential of every career professional he works with by consulting them through the job search process. You can visit his blog at WriteMyResumeNow.com
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A typical approach to a job search includes creating resume profiles on popular job boards, such as Careerbuilder, Monster or Yahoo Jobs, and then targeting professional social media websites like LinkedIn, Google Profiles and Brazen Careerist. Perhaps the very ambitious job seeker takes it a step further by creating a blog which showcases all of their qualifications.
Utilize SEO to Create Resume Profiles
Chris Perry, personal branding expert and the founder of one of the largest career blogs, Career Rocketeer, suggests that the structure of the internet does not always allow the best job candidates to be visible. In order for a resume profile to be found on the internet, it must be searchable. In order for it to be searchable, resume profiles must include keywords that correspond with search terms that hiring managers and recruiters use to locate top talented job prospects. Furthermore, not only do resume profiles need to include important keywords, but the placement of these keywords is also important to search engines.
The world of employment is competitive and involves many job candidates, all with similar skills and qualifications, just like how the world of business includes many organizations all with similar products and services. The manner in which organizations fight for prime positioning, aiming for the first page on Google, is the same manner in which a job seeker must fight for prime positioning on job boards and professional social media sites such as LinkedIn. The reality is that the best company does not always climb to the top of the search results of an engine, just like how the best job candidate with the most qualified skills sometimes gets placed after the person with little experience. So just how does a candidate implement a SEO approach to creating their resume profile?
Resume Keyword Approach
1. Repetition: Read a good amount of job postings that are related to the industry that is of interest. Keep a close eye on the required qualifications. Include them in the personal profile/summary section. Repeat these words in the “core competencies” or “area of expertise” section. Repeat them again, varying the terminology, within the body of your resume. For example, say a job seeker uses sales in the personal profile section and negotiation in the core competencies section – it would be effective to repeat sales and negotiation in the body of the resume and add business development, account management, bargaining and consulting too. But also keep in mind if the job posting says sales experience required instead of business development experience required, place greater emphasis on repeating sales throughout the resume profile.
2. Placement: Use the keywords early on in the personal profile/summary section of your resume profile. Keep in mind that the search engines will value the keyword terms you used first at the beginning of your resume profile over ones you used later. So if a job posting lists experience in engineering design, function analysis, and solution implementation as a minimum requirement and has testing and subcontractor management as additional benefits, put the three minimum requirements in the personal profile section and follow it up with a core competencies section that includes the two additional benefits.
3. Showcase: Attach powerful action words to the qualification keywords to illustrate how skills were effectively used to accomplish organizational goals. For example, using the job posting qualifications listed in the placement resume keyword approach, a job seeker could say, “Achieved a 100% output growth rate within a 6 month time period by implementing (qualification keyword) an automated performance review solution (qualification keyword) leading to the escalation (action word) of department productivity.
Strong Resume Profiles are Keyword-Rich
In order to develop an exceptional resume profile a candidate must not only have great qualifications, but must also have a strong keyword strategy in place to ensure that all their outstanding qualifications become visible. If a job seeker incorporates SEO techniques into their resume profile development process, they will be one step closer to finding a job. With repetition, placement, and a showcase keyword SEO strategy in place, a resume profile not only becomes exceptional but searchable.
