Over at Scobleizer, I was reading a comment thread and a very interesting comment came up. It was in the context of Robert Scoble giving a few pearls of wisdom about “what to do if you get fired in this kind of climate” (Cole’s Notes Version: Don’t slack off, work real hard at getting noticed, whether it be flooding folks with resume’s or networking until your fingers/ears/feet bleed). Anywhoo, there was one particularly interesting comment about resume’s and keywords by a blogger named Poetslife (who works as a technical writer amongst many other things)
Keywords? For real?
Call me naive, but I didn’t think there was an association — and perhaps neither would you, unless you began to wonder if machines (i.e. software, i.e. algorithms) are sorting out resume’s. And in fact, perhaps, this is the case at some larger companies.
To wit:
“Keep in mind one huge technology change in the way your submitted resume is “read”: by software, not humans.
Writing resume for a headhunter for side money many years ago I discovered one critical job-finding tip: most resumes now are scanned and parsed by software in HR departments and only a small number of those get to hiring managers hands.
Tip? Increase your odds by placing your qualifying keywords (software experience, certifications, etc.) at the top of your resume where the scanning software will lift it and match it with any job keywords the employer has listed in the job notice.
It works. Because I’m a technical writer and people ask me, I’ve volunteer re-written resumes for many people over the years, from ex-White House guys to geeks just out of school.
When I’ve rewritten their resume to include keywords at the top where the scanning software can read it (and not buried on the second or third page)…they get interviews and then that converts to a job.”
[emphasis my own]
Hmmm. Identifying keywords that match the goals of your resume. Having it close to the top, or above the fold. Now, all I’m wondering is if we need to be careful about keyword stuffing! (Or inserting paragraphs of keywords near the bottom of the page … )
Now, I have absolutely no way of verifying if any of these kinds of claims are true, but of course they make total sense in a general hand-waving kind of way: software is getting more sophisticated; it can help with parsing out and searching for Stuff; resume’s could be that Stuff; the way that it parses and sorts and organizes could be based on keywords, which is what Search Engines do (and what Google has built its multi-billion dollar business on — yes, and Adwords / Adsense).
Bottom line?
Maybe knowing a little bit about SEO that you’ve picked up creating your blog has some portability into your other offline life [there's probably, as well, an entire commentary on how software algorithms may soon play an integral part of our lives, but that's a post for another time]
Who knew?
