Sunday, August 28, 2011

Using Keywords | With Thousands Competing For The Same Job, You Need The Spark To Stand Out

If an employer doesn't like the first three sentences of your resume, the rest of it might never be read and end up in a virtual trash folder.

Among the changes brought by the Internet is an array of new job-hunting tools. The unemployed can find dozens of job openings online and electronically hurl hundreds of resumes at them, but this technique often doesn't work.

Most of the nearly 30,000 job hunters in Brevard County are using the Internet in their search for employment. But despite the Internet's efficiency and capacity, online job hunters often fail to get their resumes viewed by employers.

After her job applications brought no responses, Susan Christman, a Merritt Island resident in her 30s, decided that her resume just wasn't impressing anybody.

"I had a traditional resume focused on education and experience," she said. "I revamped it."

She aimed it toward a commercial property appraisal company by incorporating graphics, a picture and a narrative that told what she could do for the company. Christman's redesigned resume apparently made the company feel that she knew them and would be a good fit for their operation. They offered her a job.

To accomplish the upgrade, she studied the company's Website and tried to incorporate what they valued. She also went to J.C. Penney and sat for a professional portrait, which she pasted on her resume layout.

"It wasn't really a resume," she said. "It was a marketing flier. I also wrote a big paragraph highlighting my achievements, marketing myself."

The rebuilt resume transformed what had been a dull list into an interesting narrative.

"And they called me within 24 hours," Christman said.

She's glad to have a job, but she might never know whether her new employer remembers a resume she sent them in February.

"I didn't ask," she said. "But the other resume in the other format got no response."

Don't take it personally, but if you're sending out resumes online and not getting responses, you're doing something wrong. It could be a lack of keywords. Maybe it's too chronological. Perhaps the document can't be scanned. And maybe you're focusing on what you've done in the past instead of what you can do for the company where you hope to work in the future.

"What you believed was a good resume five years ago is probably not doing it for you," said professional workshop trainer Chris Rasor, who's had 19 years' experience in human resource and 11 years in recruiting. She now teaches resume writing for Brevard Workforce.

Judging the effectiveness of your resume is simple.

"If it's working properly, you'll get a phone call," she said.

While unemployment in Brevard sits at 11.3 percent and thousands were laid off in July from the space shuttle program, there are hundreds of jobs going unfilled in the county. Employers aren't finding applicants they want to hire.

"They are screaming in Brevard for good quality applicants," Rasor said. "The two things they are saying to us are that the resumes are terrible, and the interviewing practices are worse."

Overcome the urge to create a chronological history of your career, she said. And remember to mention keywords, which are not a magic code.

"The employer feeds them to you every time they do a job description," Rasor said. "They really have to be at the top of the resume."

Former shuttle program workers, many of them unemployed after long careers in aerospace, are having trouble with resumes and interviews and have filled resume writing classes offered by Brevard Workforce.

"The great majority haven't interviewed in a long time," Rasor said.

These suddenly unemployed workers face increased competition for jobs and will have to learn to sell their skills to a new employer.

"You're going to have to stand out," she said.

Former Navy Seabee and Postal Service worker George Wait, 50, signed up for Rasor's class in Rockledge after he sent out dozens of resumes and received no response. He's been unemployed four months, even though he can operate heavy equipment, has computer training and a military background, which usually impresses prospective employers.

"I have tons of skills," he said before Rasor's class. "I just think I'm doing something wrong, not putting keywords in there. I'm going to start doing that right now."

Fresh out of the military, Ricky Goodrich, 43, also attended the resume writing classes. He's convinced that his resume isn't effective. He's focusing on keywords such as supervision, leadership and managerial.

"Maybe I'm putting it in military terms that people can't understand," he said.

A security specialist, he wants to change the direction of his career.

"I was looking to do something a little bit different in the training and teaching field. I'm hoping to translate those (military) skills into the regular job market."

He's sent out his resume 50 times in the past months and received no responses. He hopes a revamped resume will bring success.

"I'm hoping that will get me looked at," he said.

And after Wayne Fuller lost his job with a small defense contractor in July, the 50-year-old signed up for a job hunting class and learned he had created a "chronological obituary."

The instructor in the resume class told him he must boil down 30 years of military and professional experience into 20 seconds.

"It was a very sobering moment," said Fuller, a former project manager. "I knew I had some serious work to do if I was ever going to go back to work. My new resume marks a real change in my perspective about how to market myself with a 20-second timeline in a fast-paced world."

Fuller, who had worked in the Northeast, recently returned to Florida to find work. During his job searches, he checks a wide variety of websites: monsterjobs.com, clearancejobs.com and employflorida.com, and monitors the websites of the large defense contractors in Brevard.

His new resume, which he began circulating last week, is short.

"The key to an effective resume is being brief and not spelling out everything I can do," he said.

Internet marketer Brian St. Ours said being qualified might not be enough to get you an interview. The owner of eWareness Inc. in Melbourne looks for someone who makes a human connection.

"We're looking for people who want to be part of the organization," said St. Ours, a veteran of the emerging Internet advertising industry that includes website optimization, keywords and search-engine placement. Many resumes come to him, but few catch his eye.

"I look for someone who understands what we're doing," he said. "People should customize their resume and cover letter."

St. Ours recommends job seekers learn about the company and lay out a case for how they would benefit the organization. A resume will find its way to the trash "if it makes us think that we're one of 10,000 other places they're applying to."

An effective resume shows what an applicant's future would be like in the company.

"Usually, it has a short couple of sentences that says what they're looking for and why they think they're a fit in our business," St. Ours said.

The most common deal breaker easily is avoided.

"Major typos," St. Ours said. "It's usually a sure sign they don't have the attention to detail we need."

St. Ours said applicants should remember they might be applying for a job that will be available in the future. Like many business owners, he now is looking for workers he might hire later.

"You get resumes from people you'd like to hire and can't hire them today," he said. "It's not just about getting a job today."

Contact Peterson at 321-242-3673 or ppeterson@floridatoday.com .

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