Job site Monster.com contains some 70 million resumes that are routinely mined by employers. Empowered by resume-savvy search engines, recruiters narrow down the vast field by rooting out keyword matches.
Knowing how to assemble an effective online version of who you are, what you have accomplished and what you are looking for is a skill you'll need for just about any job search these days. Taleo Research, which studies management practices, found that 94% of the top 500 U.S. corporations solicit online career information so their human resources departments can use software to whittle down a huge stack of candidates quickly to a manageable list of finalists.
An online curriculum vitae is a different document than a paper version. "The purpose is not to look like an individual, it's to look like a match," says Pat Kendall, a career coach in Tigard, OR. Looking like a match in the eyes of a filter, says Kendall, means speaking the language of job-specific keywords. Most electronic resumes are automatically dumped if they don't have a certain number of keywords that correspond with skills related to the position.
Finding the keywords is as easy as flipping through help-wanted ads.
Source: BusinessWeek, May 7, 2007