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How to create your own scannable resume
Someone thought it was unlikely that his prospective employer used resume scanning, but he didn't know for sure. So he produced a resume (following) that was pleasing to the human eye and would also pass through a scanner and keyword search successfully:
- On a separate sheet of paper, he jotted down the following list of keywords that he assumed the employer would program into the database search engine.
- He incorporated those words appropriately into his resume. Here's the list of keywords he came up with:
Management
Safety
Employee relations
Health education
Health-risk assessment
Employee communications
Assessment
Insurance
Benefits administration
Personnel
Childcare
Wellness program
Communications
Health coverage
Human resources
Policy
Human Resources Management Certificate
Insurance claims and appeals
Maternity leave
Newsletter
Training
Career Casualty
Don't worry about resume scanning if you're applying for a senior-management position. Resumes for executive-level jobs. are rarely subjected to resume scanning because they aren't put into resume databases. Instead, these high-level resumes are usually reviewed in their hardcopy forms by top executives, owners, or boards of directors.
Having an official Keyword section near the top of your resume is useful, but it's also optional. Even without it, the search engine will scour your document for relevant words. Can you find each of these words in his resume, as a search engine would?
Bonus Check
The simple formatting of a scannable resume is ideal for a job applicant going for a technical position. The hiring manager will be looking primarily for clarity of presentation and quality of content. That's easily attainable within the scannable format guidelines mentioned in this chapter.
The Least You Need to Know
- Before assuming you need a scannable resume, call your potential employer's Human Resources department to ask whether they use resume scanning in their applicant-review process.
- If the company uses resume scanning, ask what its guidelines are so that you can produce a resume for the company's particular system.
- You can create a resume that is both scannable and pleasing to the human eye.
- Never use italics, underlines, or fancy fonts on your scannable resume.
- Employ simple formatting in your scannable resume; do not include vertical or horizont al lines.
- Use black ink on white paper; it's the easiest combination for the scanner to read.