The job hunt is all about finding ways to stick out. If you’re looking for a job in IT, previous experience alone won’t get you your next gig.
Nowadays, nearly all tech recruiters use online tools to find candidates. Optimizing your resume for the web makes it easier for recruiters and hiring managers to find you, ultimately improving your chances of landing a good job.
How Can You Optimize Your Resume For the Web?
Use keywords to describe your experience and skills
Marketing is everything, and the easiest way to optimize your resume for the web is to use popular keywords or phrases. Websites such as Keysearch can show you popular search engine terms, and Linkedin News can be a great source for identifying industry trends.
Most of the time, however, all the keywords you need to know are in the job listing itself.
The job listing usually doubles as a prompt for the company’s resume-parsing software, so it’s in your best interest to make your resume closely match the verbiage used in the job listing. The obvious downside here is that it means you must make an iteration of your resume for each opening you apply to.
Don’t overdo the keywords
A word of caution on those keywords, though: don’t overdo it.
Search engines can flag your entry as spam and reduce your SEO ranking if those keywords are used excessively or if the resume matches the listing too closely. If your resume reads like a broken record or a ChatGPT abomination, you’re hurting your chances of getting a callback.
This also applies to LinkedIn and other job sites where you create a personal profile. When in doubt, focus on making your resume readable and sprinkle in those keywords where it feels natural.
Tell a story with action and outcome
Believe it or not, there is still a place for wordsmithing in the post-ChatGPT world.
Hiring managers are looking for candidates that will make an impact. Use these tips to turn your experience into a story:
- Use a verb to describe an action you performed
- Use a metric to illustrate your impact
- Use a keyword to communicate your method/outcome
For example:
“Reduced deployment time by 50 percent using containers and virtualization.”
In this example, you show a positive, quantifiable outcome while including two popular keywords for software development (containers and virtualization).
If you’d like to hear more ways you can improve your IT resume, our recruiter team at Technology Partners would love to connect you. We’ve been helping IT professionals get jobs for the last 30 years, and we’d love to help you, too.
Ready to Find Your Dream Job?
To get started, send your name and resume to careers@technologypartners.net.
