Keywords

By now you should have some good examples of your achievements and be aware of your key skills and strengths.  Our next check is another way of making sure that your application contains the content that the recruiter will be looking for.  We have touched on this throughout the course; however, this section explains in a little more detail about how this works and the importance of keywords.

Often online methods rely on the use of keyword searches.  This means that your CV/resume will be scanned electronically, to search for specific words or phrases.  Going back to our earlier point about tailoring your application, this emphasises again why this is important.  It is vital that you make sure that your application includes the relevant keywords that your prospective employer has used. 

If you are not sure what these are – for example perhaps you are sending speculative applications and have not seen a particular role yet – one way to find out is to search for 6 similar jobs which you are interested in.  Then highlight similar words which appear, usually found within the person specification under “required skills/experience”. 

A word of caution – avoid the temptation to copy and paste blocks of text.  Recruiters do not particularly favour this, so you need to strike a good balance between using keywords and phrases to bring to life your own skills and experience.

In addition, when applying online, software tends to search for nouns, so making a few simple changes such as replacing “communicate” with “communication” will increase your chances.  This is in contrast to the traditional CV/resume style of writing, which recommends starting with verbs e.g. Led.  You could consider replacing with Leadership.

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