If you want to make a cake, you need to mix the right ingredients, in the right proportions. If you want to land an interview that leads to a job offer, you need the right "keywords" in your resume.
Keywords are action nouns associated with specific disciplines or industries.
"For example, keywords for an accountant might include 'cost accounting,' 'budget analysis,' 'auditing,' 'tax,' etc.," said Jay Block, certified professional resume writer (CPRW), international career coach and co-author of "2500 Keywords to Get You Hired." For an IT professional, the keywords might be related to expertise in various types of operating systems and software programs.
Depending on the job, keywords can relate to skills but also to educational degrees, clients, certifications, types of products and "soft skills," such as being personable, motivated or a team player.
"Keywords create key messages, particularly in today's electronic job searches," Block said.
For more than a decade, technology and large electronic jobs boards have made it easier for employers and employees to connect and have changed some of the rules about resume-writing.
"You need to understand how the process works. The numbers of people applying to a job online can be prohibitive. Not all the resumes are going to get read, and the difference between traditional and electronic resumes is like comparing apples and oranges," said Miguel Caraballo, trainer and instructional designer for the Georgia Department of Labor and a certified professional resume writer.
Today's corporations, organizations and headhunters often rely on database software to store and electronically scan the resumes sent in response to job ads. The computer searches for preprogrammed keywords that relate to the skills and experience needed for the job. An applicant whose resume renders a significant number of "hits" (keywords found) may be asked to send a paper resume that will be read by a hiring manager, or the job-seeker may get called for an interview.
Resumes may be ranked initially based on the number of matches.
Not knowing about keywords or how to use them could mean having all the right qualifications yet missing out on good job opportunities.
"Keyword books can be a useful guide to help you start thinking in the resume-writing mode. When used correctly, keywords are a powerful career tool, but they're not an instant fix for a poorly crafted resume," Caraballo said. "You can't just go to one of the career books that lists keywords for various occupations and industries and use it like a thesaurus."
Generating your own keywords
"Most people graduating from the academic assembly line of education don't know how to market what they've spent years learning. They aren't taught that it's OK to look good on paper," Block said. "Fear permeates the job-search process, yet there are excellent tools out there to help, and, when people learn to manage those tools, they gain a newfound confidence and passion to market themselves."
The most powerful keywords are those that showcase your unique skills and abilities and are targeted specifically at what you want to do next, whether that's a job description or a specific company or industry in which you would like to work. Locating those words will take some time and effort.
"The trouble is that we don't have social conversations about what we do. We talk about baseball, our kids, our homes -- but not how we employ 'adult learning strategies' to have 'a better return on investment' for a course we've designed," Caraballo said.
To write better resumes using keywords that relate to their skills and accomplishments, he suggests that clients spend 20 minutes alone with a pen and pad, writing down everything they know how to do -- from making coffee to performing brain surgery.
"After 10 minutes, you'll hit a blank wall, but wait. You haven't begun to tap what your memory is holding in terms of content. Make yourself sit, and the words will begin to flow again," he said. "You'll generate a lot more content than you'll ever need for a resume and will edit a lot out, but if you don't do this process, you'll probably miss something important."
Once you've done the internal work, a keywords book and other sources can help you refine how you describe what you can do.
"As you read the word lists, experiences will pop into your mind. You'll be able to say, 'Oh, I did that, and that's what you call it,' " Caraballo said.
Other places to find and test keywords against your own background include the job listings to which you're responding, which may contain many of the keywords employers will use in their searches.
"Don't copy the ad verbatim; you'll lose credibility. But make sure you demonstrate that you have those skills throughout your resume," Caraballo said.
Scrutinize similar job ads to see which words get listed first or are repeated most often. Those are likely the must-have criteria.
Read trade journals and industry associations' Web sites to find out what the buzzwords are in your field, talk to industry colleagues or peruse government job descriptions, which can be found in the Occupational Outlook Handbook at www.bls.gov.
"Go to the Web sites of companies where you want to work to learn how they describe their own company culture. Read their mission statement to see what's important to them," Block said.
As you find keywords and prepare to write your resume, remember that there are four types of labor assets that can produce results, Block said. "These are skills, knowledge, traits and intangible assets."
For example, a skill might be Web site designing; knowledge might be an MBA degree or expertise in a manufacturing process; a trait is dependability or optimism. "An intangible asset may be someone's reputation, having a loyal client base that will follow you from one company to another or 15 years' experience in an industry," Block said.
Putting keywords to work for you
"It's not keywords that get people hired, but the key messages that they convey, and the message that you want to send is the results that you can produce," Block said. "Your keywords should be put together in such as way as to answer the employer's question, 'What can you do for me?'
"Keep in mind that you want to address the employer's most significant measurement. That may not be an economic objective but could be improving efficiency, cutting costs, reducing caseloads, improving test scores or retaining employees -- depending on the business."
Given the powerful messages that keywords can send about your ability to do the job, career coaches suggest that applicants use those words everywhere -- not just throughout the resumes but also in their cover letters, interviews and follow-up letters.
"The cover letter is also an excellent place to use specific keywords that are important to your target company and show your knowledge of that organization," Caraballo said.
There are keywords that can stand alone and others that need backup. Self-explanatory keywords -- such as "multicolor printing" or "Microsoft Excel" -- can be listed in a "summary of qualifications" or "core strengths" section near the top of your resume.
"In an all-text electronic resume, where you can't guide the reader's eye through your document with formatting techniques like bullets and fonts, you may want to include a keyword section at the beginning," Caraballo said. It's OK to break the no-abbreviations rule with electronic resumes, particularly because the computer may be searching for "HVAC specialist" as well as the words "heating, ventilation and air-conditioning maintenance."
Other keywords -- such as "team builder," "mergers and acquisitions" or "return on investment" -- gain power if they are linked with specific examples of work experience and accomplishments. These keywords may be found in the resume's "work history" section. The keywords used should describe your skills accurately and should read as if they naturally belonged in your resume, particularly in a paper version.
Because the desired criteria will change from job posting to job posting, it's best to adjust keywords in your "professional summary" or "billboard" section (if you're using the showcase format taught in Block's "101 Best Resumes to Sell Yourself"), rather than rewriting the whole document.
"Most people won't put in the work that preparing a good resume requires. You can't treat it casually. Casualness leads to casualty," Block said. "Tweaking the top statement in your resume to better fit the requested criteria in a job posting takes about five minutes. But if you're willing to make minor changes, you'll see major differences in the outcome."