Tips on Posting a Resume to an Online Database

At some point, all job seekers will need to post their resume online whether it be for a job application, social recruiting site or a job board. On the face of it, the task of posting it online sounds rather easy. Click, upload and your done! Well, it's not always that easy. For example, sometimes the resume database software does not populate the fields of the database correctly. Nearly all resume databases allow you to manually check and modify your resume posting after uploading. But I have seen a few corporate career sites that appear to have been built in-house and don't offer the option to correct errors that occurred during resume uploads, but these are rare.

So, how do you post your resume online such that your career information is visible and your resume is frequently part of a recruiter's search results? This is the salient question for any job seeker who is not getting the callbacks that he or she expects. Remember, a resume database exists not only to keep track of the thousands or millions of potential job candidates, but also as a competitive ranking system. If your resume information has been posted in such a manner that it has a low ranking relative to other resumes in the database, your resume will be "invisible" and naturally receive fewer callbacks by recruiters.

Here are some tips of how to post your resume to a database so it is most visible in recruiters searches:

1. Completely fill out the resume profile. There are two types of resume databases: (1) resume is parsed and the career information is inputted into a single profile, or (2) resume is uploaded for viewing and downloads by the recruiter and a separate profile must be completed manually. The second option is how Monster.com has structured its resume database. If you only upload your resume to Monster without completing the profile, you will get few if any "saves."

2. Enter your keywords in the job title field. CareerBuilder used to indicate below the Job Title field of its resume database that this field is "what the employers will see when they perform a resume database search." In other words, this is one of the primary ways the software determines how to rank your resume. I have experimented with entering a personal name, a job title only, and a long list of keywords into the job title field on CareerBuilder. I have always found the personal name gets fewer searches than the long list of keywords. In addition, the most popular keywords are software or technical terms so make sure to include in your keyword string all your software skills with each separated by a comma. This will increase the likelihood of it being part of the search results.

3. Current job should match the job title field. Resume database software universally places the most emphasis on your current or most recent job. This is a departure from the pre-Internet days where years of experience ruled the day. Now, I am not suggesting that your years of experience are unimportant. I'm not. But, for a moment, think like an employer and a coder of resume database software. Employers assume that your freshest skills are the ones you currently use, not the ones you used 5 or 10 years ago. So, they would like to find someone for an open position who has recently been in the same type of position because they will be able to make an impact to the work team immediately (and without training or orientation). The coder will respond to this philosophy by ensuring the most current or recent job has greater ranking value than earlier jobs. And, in situations where both the most recent job (ex. Customer Service Manager) and job title keywords match (ex. Customer Service Manager, MS Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, etc.), the software will rank your resume higher and make it more "visible."

4. Break out different positions in the same company. If you have worked for one company over 10 or 15 years and held several positions within that company, make sure to separate each position as a separate employer. If you group all these positions into a single employer entry, you will decrease your ranking because you will rob yourself of keyword data. This is a big problem with military veterans. If a military veteran is a retiree who has 20 years of experience from the U.S. Army and places it in one employer entry, his or her resume will be essentially invisible in resume searches because the recruiter sees only the last job and not the person's entire career path.

5. Be creative about detailing your skills. All resume databases have a skills section. Since recruiters use either the job title or skills to search databases, you should also make sure you have a detailed list of skills. Start with your computer software or computer skills. Then, go into skills about roles (ex. project management, budgeting, etc.) and finally get creative and add types of equipment, writing, or other specific aptitudes that may not be commonly listed. This will also improve your ranking.