A couple weeks ago, I wrote about 2 easy ways to make your resume more effective.  A focus of the article was on keywords, and the increasing importance they are playing with electronic resume databases.  I recently noticed a great article on key words from Dice.com.  This article goes further into how to identify the correct keywords.

For example:  “Most likely the same person who posted the job online is the one reviewing resumes for the position,” says Deborah Walker, a certified career coach and president of Alpha Advantage in Portland, Ore. “So they are looking for resumes that match the key words contained in the job description.”

And have you wondered where to put these “keywords” in your resume?  The article recommends locating your keywords in the top of your resume, where they are caught by keyword searches.  And by having them in the top third of your resume, they keywords are already in the best position for when a recruiter is personally reviewing it.  Walker reiterates what I said in my article about the incredibly short window of time your resume has to make an impression:   “Frequently, the recruiter won’t look beyond the top few inches of the resume, because they quickly review a batch of candidate resumes when looking for a match. They need to see those key words in the first 15 seconds or you’ll be eliminated from consideration.”