But first things first. "Congratulations! Scott McNulty".
Scott reported the good news to Krystal Mires, the Director of Career Services, at Tech Skills.
The email stated:
"Krystal, when we met last week (my first meeting with the group) you asked me to let the group know when I landed a job. Well, I got a 3 month contract (which is the kind of job I look for) at 5 p.m. Tuesday. "
"My resume was only active on the internet for 9 days total. "
Scott McNulty
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But there's More ...
What was the secret that made his 7 page resume pop to the top of the charts?
Scott's 7 page resume was carefully crafted to take advantage of the internet search engine's spiders that crawl across the internet. It pushed his resume to the top of the job heap, using keywords that automatically alerted recruiters to take notice.
Scott told the group members, that he used this specific format for years and it has proved to be effective. In fact, he first received calls from recruiters after two hours of posting it on the internet, so he had evidence it was working as designed.
Let's look at his resume.
1. The first page contained the normal Name, Address, Phone, and Email contact information.
2. Here is the difference: The next section contained a paragraph of Keywords rather than a executive summary of objectives. We will call this the Keyword Section.
Keywords are industry specific words or phrases that are used in automated search engines to rank the relevance of your document and push it to the top of the heap. These keywords are contained within the job requirements documents posted by each employer. The greater the keyword match, the higher the ranking it receives. Automation tools alert recruiters that the top ranking candidates are available and they appear on the top of their To-Do list, as the best call back candidates.
Note: Scott listed 22 industry words in this Keyword section.
For example here are two keywords:
ETL, Extract Transform Load ...
Note: Both keywords mean the same thing, except the computer would see them as two different keywords. If this was a resume meant to be read by a computer or human, you might make the mistake of only using one of these keywords. It might make the resume shorter but you run the risk that the reader knows the difference between the keywords ETL or Extract Transform Load (E.T.L.)
Both the human and computer may be only scanning for specific keywords. This may make the difference between including or excluding you from the pile of resumes that are reviewed.
3. Next, Scott's resume contained an Objective Section.
He wrote:
"To work with a company utilizing my talents working with data, programming and databases".
Note: His objective stated in one sentence was not remarkable. It was vague. He could have said his objective was to utilized his various SQL Developer, Systems Analyst and Database Administrator skills to support a dynamic environment.
4. Next he displayed the ORACLE Certified Professional™ logo. (That's a good idea. Certifications are important.)
5. The Skill Summary Section:
The skills summary was not summarized.
The "summary" filled the first page and contained a series of bullet statements, such as "Five years MS-SQL Server T-SQL development against version 2000, 2005, 2008" or " Six years of SQL programming experience against MySQL, Oracle and other SQL based systems."
Note: The statements contained the keywords MS-SQL Server, MySQL, T-SQL and its versions. It also contained the name of the skill, such as, T-SQL development and the duration (Five years) or Six Years of SQL programming. These statements contained measurable results. A resume can be improved by including numbers.
Scott, listed his soft skills with statements, such as:
- "Able to translate business requirements into technical requirements".
- "Extensive application support including troubleshooting and vendor relations".
- "A solid understanding of business processes as well as technology".
That was only a summary of the first page, shorten for this article.
The Work History Section:
The following 6 pages contained a new section for each of his former employers and every task he completed. Each task was peppered with keywords.
For example:
"MySql Troubleshooting for Quipogroup.com, resolving SQL issues in their client database and writing SQL code for developers."
Note: The keyword count on this resume must have ranked very high based on the number of repeated keywords, such as, "SQL" used within this document.
Listing every task must have covered every possible job requirement that matched an employers job requirement wish list.
Note: The job requirement wish list contained all of the ideal candidates attributes and skills needed for the job. The ideal candidate can do everything on the list.
Since Scott landed a job with this amazing resume, I'd say, for him, the Mother Of All Resumes covered all the bases and met his goal.
Lesson Learned:
You can't, always, judge a resume by its cover letter.
