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Get Your Resume Recruiter-Ready with This Trick

Word art related to social good work.

A common piece of career advice is to craft a new resume for each job you apply for. This ensures you use the language of the job description and that the experiences and accomplishments you list align with the opportunity. But how do you make sure you’ve done this properly?

Over on The Hired Guns, Ryan Galloway suggests pasting your resume into a word-cloud app, like TagCrowd. The app will generate a cloud of the top used words in your resume. The more frequently you use certain words, the bigger they are in the cloud.

Here’s mine from the resume I submitted to Idealist when I applied to be an editor:

Word art related to social good work.

In this resume, I made sure to highlight any and all communications, social media, and project management experience with nonprofits as these stood out as key responsibilities in the original job description. I had volunteered with Idealist in the past made sure to mention that in the resume as well to demonstrate my involvement and familiarity with the organization. And finally, since I emphasize accomplishments over duties, you see a ton of action verbs as well.

Given that recruiters and hiring managers spend just a few seconds looking at your resume, using the right language and experiences is just one step in getting you closer to landing your dream job.

Hat tip to Erin Greenawald, over at The Daily Muse for this helpful find! Check out her word cloud here.


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by Allison Jones

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