If you want your resume to actually be a marketing document for you, and get a recruiter’s or a hiring manager’s attention, you must pack that resume with the keywords that are relevant to the career area you want. Recruiters, hiring managers, and Human Resource departments use computer searches and applicant tracking systems to flag resumes worth looking at, and that means they use keywords to search for the ones they’ll be interested in looking at further.

But what if you’re new to the area and don’t have much experience? Well, then you have to be a little more creative in your mission. That does NOT mean you should lie on your resume. That’s always a bad idea, and you’re sure to be found out eventually. What I mean is that you should highlight what is relevant to the potential employer.

So, for example, if you wanted a job in medical sales, here’s what you might do:

• If you’re in real estate, but you sold to a group of doctors, you might want to list them as one of the accounts you sold to.

• If you sold copiers, maybe you sold to clinics, day surgery offices, etc. Not only does it help with the keyword count in your resume, it lets us know that at least you’ve been in the environment.

• By all means, go ahead and join professional organizations. So for a laboratory sales rep job, you could join AACC (American Association of Clinical Chemistry), CLMA (Clinical Lab Manager’s Association), or various other organizations where you’d find people in that profession. Then you can put them on your resume, and elaborate on your association with them, which gives you more keywords for your resume.

• Carefully read job descriptions and ads to see what keywords they use; then see which ones you could legitimately incorporate into your resume.

• Don’t forget keywords for sales skills.

Need some more resume help? Research resume writing skills using keywords online, or check out the Extreme Sales Resume Makeover Kit available from Career Confidential.

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