Resume Optimization - Help recruiters & employers searching Google find you!

When people think of search engine optimization (SEO) they often think of ensuring a company’s website is visible within the major search engines like Google. This same strategy can be applied to your resume. By using a few simple techniques you can dramatically increases your chances of being found by recruiters and employers and hired. Below are 9 tips to ensure your resume is optimized for visibility.

9 tips to optimize your resume visibility

1. Use full and abbreviated words in your resume - For example, if you are a human resource professional include both HR and human resource in the body of your resume.
   
   
   
2. Include keyword variations within your resume - For example rather than just using the word developer on your resume, include words like programmer, programming and engineer as well. If you are familiar with C# and VB great, but don’t forget to add the word .net
   
   
   
3. Include keywords within your file name – Rather naming your file simply resume.doc use John-Dow-Web-Developer-Resume.doc instead.
   
   
   
4. Don't Forget Geographical Terms – You never know what geographical terms a recruiter may use to run their search so be sure to include all variations for example - MA, Mass, Massachusetts.
   
   
   
5. Refresh your resume – Everyone likes fresh new content, every few weeks alter your resume just slightly, change your title, add a few keywords ext. By keeping your content “fresh” you will enjoy increased visibility within a company’s database queue as well as job boards and search engines.
   
   
   
6. Don’t forget the reader - While it is important to optimize your resume, be sure to use keywords in a way that makes sense to the human reader, simply adding in a bunch of keywords won’t make a good first impression, finding the balance is key here.
   
   
   
7. Formatting matters – You only have precious seconds to get a recruiters attention. That said you want to make sure your information is presented in a way that is easily scalable. Break up large chucks of content with heading tags and use bullet points to denote individual skills.
   
   
   
8. Create a keywords Summary section – This is similar to tagging a blog post. In the keywords summary section you want to include additional terms that relate to your skill set. You don't want a laundry list, you're looking for 8-10 additional terms at most. As an example if you were ac accountant you would want to do something like this.
   
   Resume keywords: general ledger, AP/AR, payroll, reconciliations, accounting, acct.
   
   
   How do you know what keywords are important to include?

• Review terminology within job postings that are in line with the type of position you’re interested in.

• Keep yourself up-todate with the latest buzzwords in your field.
  

• Check out TheLadders.com which lists the 100 top recruiter search words.

Scanning software has come a long way BUT….

Don’t forget a text only version– Often companies use a parsing technology when identifying qualifying information within a candidates resume. Word processors like Ms Word includes proprietary tagging/formatting that can compromise the readability when uploaded into an organizations database. That said it’s helpful to save a version of your resume in plain text such as a notepad file.

Disclaimer: I am not a recruiter but an interactive marketing strategist specializing in SEO as it relates to the recruitment industry. Recruiters, feel free to post additional tips.