Applying Everywhere, but Still No Job?

Please help me!

When you reply to a job opening by sending a resume or completing an online application, how many entries do you think that company receives? How many do you think the well known resume banks like Simply Hired, Career Builder, or Monster receive? How do you get noticed?

One of Two Things Happen to Your Information

One, it gets placed in a very large pile of resumes and applications on someone’s desk, or two – it gets scanned into a resume bank. Either way it gets buried, most likely gone forever if not written correctly.

True story

One hiring authority, with two large stacks of resumes on her desk, said she did not have time to go through every resume. When queried about her method of choosing the correct fit if she did not go through each resume, she replied “I grab a stack, thumb to the middle and pick the first person who appears qualified.” 

To Get Noticed, Use Key Words

If it gets scanned into a data bank, the only way you will get noticed is if your information contains the same exact keyword or keyword phrases the hiring manager will use to search for applicants. How likely will your information be found? An over simplified example: if HR is searching for a skill they call “customer specialist” for their company, only resumes containing “customer specialist” will be returned because that will be their search phrase.  While everyone practices customer service, few people call it “customer specialist.” So, list very descriptive job duties in various ways in your general resume that include keyword or phrases hiring authorities might use in searches. Attempt to add variables where it makes sense.  When you conduct Google searches, you use keywords and phrases – so do they. Better yet, want to know what words or phrases a particular firm is using? Look at their job posting! Their ads will give you their keywords, keyword phrases and titles! Customizing your resume for each company by working their own keywords into your resume will increase visibility. Companies search by what is familiar to them, their titles, and their descriptions. Use that knowledge to your advantage. Doing otherwise dooms your resume or application to suffocation in some over-bloated databank.

Now the Secret Weapon – STOP sending in job applications and resumes just be added to some “stack,” but that’s another story on creativity.

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