March
17th, 2008
Why bother to tweak the crap out of your resume?
Seth Godin recently posted in his blog about reasons for having (or more precisely not having) a resume. He says “I think if you’re remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a resume at all.” I don’t completely disagree Seth. If all you have is a resume then his point is well stated. You’ll end up getting contacted by companies “for you to get a job as a cog in a giant machine.”
Remember his post was directed to people who think they’re remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular. Not to make those people sound narcissistic but more having an awareness of a unique talent or skill. The points with which I disagree are that while a resume itself most likely won’t land you an amazing opportunity, it is both valuable and important.
Why’s that?
It’s the standard skills assessment document. So instead of getting rid of your resume I think a better idea is to tweak the crap out of it. I have experimented with various techniques to get my resume on this site seen by as many people as possible. Your blog/portfolio/references don’t mean a thing if someone doesn’t happen to come across them. Your resume is an entry point to whatever your personal marketing package happens to be.
Narrow down your niche and your goal
If you know you’re really good at something then you shouldn’t have any problems narrowing that down. Don’t try to be a jack of all trades but rather a master of a few. Determine what those are and focus your entire “marketing package” around those. For example, I do PHP/MySQL better than I do anything else. I also tend to pick up and use technology early on which is one of my competitive advantages. Sure I do other stuff…but not nearly as well and I need to communicate that. Most importantly…stay focused!
Optimize your resume for keywords
Once you determine your niche then begin thinking about what terms or keywords stand out. In my example of PHP/MySQL development it might be things like Frameworks, APIs, MySQL Replication, PHP Configuration and Optimization. Now if you go look at my resume and each of those words appear at least once.
Optimize your websites for search engines
You’ll probably want to optimize your site for the same keywords as your resume. After-all, there’s no point in optimizing your resume for the keyword candy and your website for shoes. Someone looking for shoes is going to find your resume and wonder why you’re so interested in candy.
Stay ahead of your competition
If you use or have any experience with newer technologies then update your resume immediately. Chances are your competition doesn’t…that’s an opportunity. Employers don’t wait for candidates to update their resumes prior to looking to fill positions.
Keep an eye on your progress
If your resume is web based then make sure you have some metrics reporting that you can look at. Google Analytics is always a good choice. You can proactively run test searches on Google and Yahoo for terms which you optimized your resume and keywords for. See if you come up on the first several pages and if not see what others who do come up early are doing different.
Personal results
I optimized for pretty general keywords. PHP developer resume is a commonly searched term nowadays. But to my surprise I have been as high as #2 (currently #6) on Google and #1 (currently #12) on Yahoo!. Both of these result in a stead influx of traffic from people looking for employers. If you don’t want to be harassed by lame recruiters (not all are) then make sure you take appropriate measures to state who should and shouldn’t contact you. Looks like I need to keep an eye on my progress more!
