I’m offering a multi-part series of quick tips for prospective employees who want to be noticed by recruiters and other employment professionals. The first tip focused on providing one’s zip code and/or phone number with area code in order to increase one’s searchability for recruiters streamlining their candidate pool geographically. The second tip also concerns one’s resume and how recruiters will search for its information.
When you think about using an abbreviation or a common-place shorthand phrase in your resume, try to think about whether this is something by which a recruiter could successfully search to find you in a pool of employment-related resumes.
For example, it’s very common in the workplace to refer to certain Microsoft softwares as simply “Word” or “Excel.” I do it all the time; you probably do, too.
As a recruiter, what happens if I search for resumes that contain the phrase “Word,” without any further customization? I receive all those resumes from people who have mentioned Microsoft Word, but also those auto mechanics whose last name is Wordsmouth and those mechanical engineers who live in Wordsville. Searching by “Word” doesn’t really give me the specific results I need as a recruiter. So my first searches might streamline to look for the phrases “Microsoft Word” or “MS Word.” This search is less likely to generate unrelated results. If you want to be in that first pool, you may want to be sure that “Microsoft Word” or “MS Word” is detailed somewhere in your resume, rather than only “Word.”
The same dilemma applies to “Excel.” What occurs if I search only by the word “Excel,” without any further search criteria? My results will include all those resumes that mention using the software “Excel,” but also the person who has “excellent” experience as an ice cream scooper and the individual who “excels” at driving over-the-road. That’s not necessarily the resume group I need. So, again, I might streamline my first search by looking for “Microsoft Excel” or “MS Excel.” If you want your resume to be in the first pool (rather than waiting until/if a recruiter generates a broader search), then you’ll want to consider identifying this software as “Microsoft Excel” or “MS Excel” somewhere in your resume. It doesn’t need to have this broader identification every time you identify it; just once to catch the search.
Similarly, you may want to reconsider how you identify the schools from which you have received education. When I’m looking for someone who is a high school graduate, I’m most likely to search for “High School,” rather than “HS” or “H.S.” When I’m searching for prospective employees who have some college training, I’m most likely to search for “College” and/or “University.” For me as a recruiter, it’s just too cumbersome to search by every conceivable abbreviation of every possible school. So, for example, if you attended ECC, please write it out as “Elgin Community College.” Likewise, if you attended U of I, I recommend that you write this out as “University of Illinois.”
These are just a few examples of abbreviations that are so common place in our language that we sometimes inject them into resumes without thinking about how they impact our visibility when recruiters and other HR professionals search for candidates. Perhaps you can think of others!
Tips, part 3 (coming soon): skill specifics.
