Utilising keywords in your CV

It's #TipTuesday - my new little mini series where I share little things that can make a big difference in helping you to secure as many interviews as possible and not get lost in the mix.

Tip number 2 is about Keywords.

You’re probably used to the idea of considering SEO when designing a website, but you might be surprised to hear that you should be applying that same mindset to your CV. If you're uploading it to job boards but not making sure you're maximising the searchability, you're basically wasting your time 😲

There are thousands of CVs on every job board and Recruiters utilise boolean search strings to filter through relevant skillsets. In order for your CV to show up in these search results, you need to think about what skills recruiters will be searching for to fill the kind of role you want.

To do this:

1) Have a look at several job specs of roles you’re interested in. What technical skills / tools are mentioned across the board? Make sure you include all the ones you have experience with.

2) Think about your job title. Is it company-specific (think Subway’s Sandwich Artists) or more generalist? Does it include an abbreviation like UAT or AI? Is it an accurate reflection of what you do?

Company-specific job titles won’t help you show up in search results. To get around this, add the more widely used version in brackets after your company-specific one. You can also do this if you feel your job title isn’t quite an accurate reflection of your role / too generalist.

If your job title includes an abbreviation, you might want to expand it somewhere else in your CV to make sure your profile is found regardless of which way your title is searched.

Hope you found the second #TipTuesday helpful. This is quite a big topic so check back for Keywords Part B next week!

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments and what you’d like advice on in future #TipTuesdays!

If you missed the first #TipTuesday, you can find it here.