Most of us assume keywords only really matter when it comes to getting your resume past a bot and into human hands. A new survey of over 3 million resumes, all ranked by hiring managers, reveals that keywords are still important to people, too, and leaving them off could cost you an interview.
It's still important to make sure your resume tells a consistent story about your experience and is tailored to each individual job you apply for, but the folks at ZipRecruiter revealed that their hiring managers—who rated all of the 3 million resumes in their database with scores between one and five stars—still rate resumes with power keywords higher than those without them. For example:
When we looked at how certain keywords affect the Star Rating of resumes, we found that words that implied management skills (not necessarily as a manager: time management is an example of a management skill everyone needs to have), a proactive stance towards working (“responsible”, “support”, and “client” speak to that) and problem solving skills (“data”, “analysis”, and “operation”) were the most highly rated.
Additionally, using these Power Keywords in your resume can increase your chance of a Five Star rating by up to 70%:
Experience
Management
Project
Development
Business
Skill
Professional
Knowledge
Year
Team
Leadership
Remember, though, that keyword stuffing will more than likely lead to your resume being discarded. Make sure you only include words that are relevant to your skills.
You can read the full report at the link below, along with some keywords you should specifically avoid as well—namely anything that denotes inexperience or clues the recruiter or hiring manager into the idea that you'd need a lot of training to be productive or successful at the job.
Another surprising note to come out of the survey is that resumes between 600-700 words were almost universally rated higher than resumes shorter than 500 words, or over 700 words. Ratings dropped off on either side pretty quickly, so it's fair to say that unless your resume really needs to be longer or shorter, that's the sweet spot. Head over to ZipRecruiter below for more tips.
How to Write the Perfect Resume | ZipRecruiter
Photo by Andrey_Popov (Shutterstock).