By Richard Kneece, CEO & Founder, hireCentral Career & Talent NetworkThe days of using creativity to get your resume noticed have passed. Font, layout, white space, envelope color, paper texture and the first few paragraphs of a cover letter no longer determine whether your resume gets read by a hiring manager.With the advent of one-click Internet applications, resume submission services and online career hubs for every industry, specialty and geography (such as Monster, HotJobs and hireCentral), applying for that perfect job is easy. Maybe too easy. Even if your qualifications are a perfect match for an opening, getting your resume noticed online may actually be harder these days. You may end up wondering if your resume has gone into a black hole.There are ways to get your online resume noticed, and read, however.Keywords, keywords, keywordsWhen you submit your resume to a career hub or an employer&rsquos website, your resume is added to a database with thousands of other resumes. Special fonts are removed, layout is standardized, and all that&rsquos left to separate you from the competition is the content. So make sure your resume includes keywords or phrases that a recruiter or an employer might search for.For example, if you&rsquove completed a GMP certification, make sure you&rsquove put that exact phrase in your resume, and make sure it&rsquos visible. If you have experience with specific manufacturing equipment that could help you get a job (or at least attract attention to your resume), make sure to include it.How do you get all of this on one page? You need not write The Iliad, but the requirement of limiting your resume to one page has eased in recent years&mdashespecially for highly specialized fields such as pharmaceutical manufacturing. Most recruiters search resume databases using industry-specific phrases. Because of this, including these phrases prominently on your resume is more important than brevity.Put the most important qualifications at or near the top of your resume. Many career hubs allow you to create a short bio separate from where you paste your resume. Include the most important items in this bio.Set realistic expectations and go industry-specificPosting your resume online should be only one component of your overall job search strategy. Understand there are thousands of people applying for job openings&mdashsome as qualified as you and others not. But while applying to a job has become as easy as copy, paste and submit, it&rsquos also created more work for the employer to sort through these applications.Depending on how specific the skills and requirements are for your industry, you may want to focus your efforts on industry-specific websites (such as hireBio.com) or professional/trade organizations for your industry. In recent years, large employers and search firms have limited their use of large general sites such as Monster, CareerBuilder or HotJobs because of the number of unqualified applicants they receive.Third-party agencies (such as executive recruiters, headhunters, etc.) tend not to post their clients&rsquo job openings on career hubs. Instead, they often search resume databases for individuals who meet their qualifications and then contact them. Employers, on the other hand, tend to respond to applications submitted directly to them and are reluctant to spend the time to search these databases.Therefore, the use of online avenues should include a combination of (a) reacting to job openings you&rsquove seen on employer&rsquos websites and career hubs, and (b) submitting your resume to a career hub&rsquos database in the hopes of being contacted later.Have an email account just for your job searchThis is important for a number of reasons:
- Because your job-search email address may be easily accessible to spam and unscrupulous individuals, it ensures your primary email account doesn&rsquot receive ads for Viagra, eBay or requests to update your bank account&rsquos password.
- It doesn&rsquot look good to a prospective employer when you use your current employer&rsquos email account for a job search. Do I have to explain why?
- It allows you to manage your applications, contacts and important job search information in one place, without the distraction of work or your personal life.
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