How to Make Your Resume Get Noticed Online

On almost every day of the year, the career Web site Monster.com has more than 40,000 resumes posted in its database.

Figuring out where the resumes go, how they get there, and what makes the difference between getting picked up by an employer and being left in some cyber black hole can be a daunting task.

But the days of snail mailing an application in response to a job opening are gone, and, according to those who design the systems recruiters and employers use to track applicants, the more you know about how to use the new technology, the better prepared you will be to land the job you want.

"When you look at the technology that's in place now, you really have to make it easy for recruiters to pick out your resume," Eric Winegardner, director of product adoption at Monster.com, said. "The technology is so mainstream that you are really at the mercy of the recruiters who log on to these databases to find candidates."

When recruiters go searching for candidates on databases such as Monster's, they usually use a word search technology to find resumes that match the terms they are using to describe their ideal applicants, Winegardner said. Knowing what they are looking for often means the difference between being part of the list retrieved by these searches and being left out in the cold.

"If a recruiter was trying to find an accountant with Sarbanes-Oxley experience [the new accounting laws passed in 2002], they might enter Sarbanes-Oxley, but they will also enter SOX into their key word search," Winegardner said. "What you want to do is find out what the relevant terminology that describes your experience in your industry is and make sure you include it on your resume."

Job searchers should also make sure they are checking in at least once a month to keep their resumes up to date and remind the Monster system that they are still looking. Most employers only search for applicants who have visited their online resume within the last month. The idea, Winegardner explained, is to keep your resume living and breathing, to make sure you are part of the searches recruiters are doing.

The rules that apply for Monster are mostly the same for other online applicant-tracking systems, whether those run internally by companies or other career Web sites.

"There are hundreds of companies serving this software niche, and to tell the truth, they are not all that different," said David Manaster, CEO of ERE Media, a newsletter for the human-resources industry. "Though there are lots of technical things that differentiate the software, it's not rocket science."

Next: Use industry-appropriate key words >