Part 2

First of all I would like to congratulate Eman, Dan, and the CCIE Flyer contributors on the 3rd Anniversary of the CCIE Flyer. I would also like to thank them for providing three years of valuable content to the CCIE community and wish them continued success!

Now onto part two of my five part series on resume mistakes:

Mistake #2 – Inadequate Use or Placement of Keywords

Anyone who has been in the I.T. field for a significant amount of time realizes that the first person to read your resume is probably not a person at all, but a computer. Before your resume even touches the inbox of a recruiter or an HR department it first gets scanned by a resume filtering program.

The filtering program analyzes the resume for certain keywords. If your resume matches a certain percentage of those keywords it goes to the next step of the screening process, if not, it gets deleted or skipped.

This filtering process can happen automatically when you submit your resume to a company’s website or it can happen manually such as when a recruiter searches for resumes on Monster.com. Some of the more technically savvy recruiters even have alerts setup that match the keywords they’re looking for and automatically email them as soon as resumes matching those keywords are posted.

How can you be sure your resume makes it past this automated filtering process? Simply add the right keywords to your resume. If you’re targeting a specific job you simply include all the keywords of the job description that you have experience with in your resume. Be sure to sprinkle the keywords throughout your resume and include actual examples of where you’ve worked on each technology if possible.

If you don’t have a specific position in mind but still want to attract the largest number of resume views possible, include in your resume every single protocol, application and hardware model you’ve ever worked on. Create a keyword section for each category.

Be Specific

Don’t just put down you’ve worked on Cisco routers. Put down Cisco 2600 series, 2800 series, 3800 series, etc. Better yet, list the specific model numbers such as Cisco 2801, 2811, 2821, etc. That is because your resume won’t match a keyword search for Cisco 2821 if you only wrote down Cisco 2800 series.

But Don’t Get Too Carried Away…

Remember that any keyword you put on your resume is fair game during a technical interview. So don’t put down keywords for which you aren’t at least somewhat familiar with the technology.

Proper Keyword Positioning is Key

Where you position your keywords on your resume is important too. If you know a technology very well and have lots of experience in it, include the technology in the keyword section as well as in the body of your resume in context with relevant examples of where you’ve used the technology.

If you’re not very strong with a technology but can be somewhat conversational on the topic if asked on a technical interview, just include the technology in the keyword section. You may even include a brief note next to the keyword stating your depth of experience. For example, if you know just a little Linux, you can state that as follows:

Software
Windows 3.1/95/98/2000/Me/XP, Red Hat Linux 9.0 (a few commands), Cisco IOS

This way your resume will still match jobs looking for some Linux background but you are less likely to be drilled too heavily on this topic during the technical interview.

Certifications

Guess where my CCIE number is on my resume? At the very top!
This is because you have less than 10 seconds to catch the reader’s attention when they’re reading your resume. If you don’t catch their interest in the first few lines of your resume, they probably won’t bother reading the rest.

So don’t bury your certifications at the bottom of your resume. If you have them, put them right at the very top of your where they can be easily seen.