Keyword Stuffing

Let me tell you a little trick marketing people use when they are marketing a new product that they want to pop up high in the search engine results: they keyword stuff. One of the most basic ways that search engines organize their results are by the types of words that appear on Web sites. For instance, if you're marketing a mop, you want your Web site to have words like "clean floors," "mopping," and "wash floors" included in the site's content. You want to think of as many combinations that a person would type into a search engine and use those phrases in your Web site copy to flag their attention.

Now, would it surprise you to hear that employers use keyword searches when scanning the resumes they receive? Since most of the job applying happens via the Internet or through e-mail, companies get hundreds, if not thousands, of replies to one single job posting. Instead of wasting precious man hours manually reading each one, they use a modified search to scan the documents for keywords that will help cut the stack.

For instance, there are far too many people that apply to jobs out of their area. It's not uncommon to post a job in St. Louis and get responses from Seattle. One of the initial qualifiers the company would therefore run the resumes through is a keyword search for St. Louis to weed the out-of-towners from the stack. Then, to make sure the rest of the stack is actually qualified for the position, they will run a search of the keywords from the job ad.

This is where you come in. If you feel you are qualified for the position, modify the language of your resume or cover letter to include some of the language from the ad itself. So, if the ad calls for someone with "network marketing experience," and your resume says that you have a "distinguished history with network marketing," modify the language to mirror the former. It's likely to get you launched to the top of the search results.

The key to successfully landing an interview is to think like the people actually doing the hiring. It's the surest way to get your resume to the top of the stack.