Top 5 Shiny Happy Resume Optimization Tips (Guest Post From Craig Fisher)

Craig Fisher is recruitment consultant, social media strategist, and trainer. He helps people and businesses leverage social media, mobile, and other new communication tools to get matched with the *right* customers, the *right* talent, and the *right* jobs. Craig hosts the original social recruiting forum on Twitter, and live conference events, known as TalentNet Live (#TNL).

Connect with him on Twitter/FishDogs.

Are you tired of the silent treatment after you send your resume to a company online?  Maybe your resume isn’t getting the love it deserves because it’s not as shiny as it should be.  And by shiny I mean easily found and full of the proper keywords in the right places.  Here are my top 5 tips to help your resume shine.

1. First of all, at the top of your resume, in the summary area, you should list the required skills for the job for which you are applying.  Next to each of these, you should list the number of years experience you have with that skill.  If you have no experience with that skill, just say so, or say “knowledge of” or “training in.”  Also list any core skill that you possess that may be relevant to that job with the years experience next to it. Ditch the generic summary at the top of your resume.

2. Make sure each skill that you have listed at the top is also shown in the body of the resume in the proper job description where you used that skill so that the reader can see where and how you used each skill that you list.  Under each job description, also list a summary of skills used.  Yes, I mean actually list the skills again, along with any other skills that were used during that job.After the title and company name for each job description in the body of your resume, write a short paragraph with details about what the company is and does, and what your main job duty was there.  Although you may think it’s obvious, not every reader of your resume will understand what that company is and what your role was unless you spell it out specifically.

3. In your bullet points under that short paragraph do not just list what you were responsible for.  List accomplishments.  Use numbers and descriptive words to show what your impact was.  “Increased sales” is not enough.  “Increased sales by 15% over 6 months” is better.

4. Don’t get too fancy with formatting.  Tables, graphics, and special formatting tend to get interpreted poorly by many a company applicant tracking systems (ATS), the database to which you submit or upload your resume online.  PDF format (Acrobat) doesn’t always translate well either.  Your best bet is to use the 97-2003 version MS Word (I know!), minimizing tables and graphics.  A Rich Text Format version works well too.  Here is a test.  Take your resume, select all, copy, and paste it into a blank MS Word or text document.  How does it do?

5. Now that you have your resume just right, repeat everything from your resume on your LinkedIn profile.  Use the information that you might include in a cover letter in the top summary portion of your LinkedIn profile.  Include your keywords there, too.  Repeat those keywords again in the “skills used” section under each job description, and start them off with your name, like this:Craig Fisher: Sales, Marketing, Recruiter, Trainer, Certified Linkedin Training, Social Media Strategy, Texas, Speaker, Writer, Profile Optimization

For an example, check out my profile on LInkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/wcraigfisher

In both your resume and Linkedin profile, including keywords that are specific to what you do will help separate yours from the thousands of resumes that are less specific.  Having these listed multiple times, in the proper places, will help it come up at the top of the search results in Google, Linkedin, Job Boards, and company databases.  And it will help the reviewer to quickly find the information they need to push you along to the next step.  Nice and shiny!