How do I use resume keywords to land a new career?

Resume keywords? A reader asked “What if you are entering into a new field in which you have no experience? I want to get into admin/receptionist/secretary field, but all of my earlier jobs are unrelated. I have no clue how to use resume keywords.”

My advice? Think very hard because if you have no experience and no expertise in that area, you won’t be able to convince an employer that you can handle the job. That’s the real purpose of resume keywords to help both real eyes and computer eyes understand that you are a match to the job.

Verifying Resume Keywords

My clients are my best source of what is valuable in their industry so I always verify that any resume keywords I select meets several criteria:

• Industry Specific – matches their industry
• Industry Current – is not an outdated term
• Client Specific – nothing is worse than putting in a keyword and claiming expertise to the keyword and getting to the interview with no ability to defend what you know. If you don’t know it, don’t put it on your resume.

Your job targets should match your skill sets

An admin does lots of filing, either with paper or electronically. You need to understand organizational systems and be able to organize numerically or alphabetically. You also should be great at people skills, answering the phones, triaging calls, diffusing difficult customers, and in general communicating.

What drove you to want the job you want?

Think of what else you have done that made you think you would like doing the job.

1. Have you gone to school? Resume Key Words can also come from mastering something in school even if you don’t have the skill.
2. What about volunteering? Have you volunteered for an organization and done that type of work. Then the keywords are still valid.
3. Have you helped a family business? You might not consider that work (but you probably should) and you could get the keywords that way.

Your Job Search Assignment: Brainstorm Keywords

Brainstorm. When you brainstorm, you don’t put barriers up. Brainstorm resume keywords. If you volunteered, list all the resume keywords that you think that would generate. When I was Operations Manager for Wausau Whitewater, I had volunteers that helped me with a myriad of projects. Keywords I can think of just from the ones that surrounded me: Event Management, Volunteer Coordination, Data Entry, Registration, Word Processing, Merchandising, Sales, Inventory Control… get the picture?

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