We are going to reverse engineer to find the keywords needed for your resumes. I say resumes because I want you to create targeted resume for each type of job you are targeting. For e.g, as a CS fresher you might target, front-end developer, PHP developer, .NET developer or even software tester. For each type of job title, you will find out relevant keywords.
In later chapters we attach these freshly created LASER targeted resumes to profiles we are going to create on Naukri. Naukri allows you to create 5 profiles under the same username and we are going to make full use of it!
Make a list of Target Job Titles (TJT) or technologies you want to work in. Based on that we can start researching the job descriptions related to the target job. If you are open to any job title in your degree or skill, make a short list and research for each title.
It could be ‘Design Engineer’, ‘Catia’ for Mechanical Engineer, ‘C# developer’, ‘WPF developer’, ‘Network Administrator’, ‘Database Administrator’ for a CS graduate etc. If you are unsure what titles or skills to target, talk to your employed friends for ideas.
Once you have the list, follow the below steps to collect the keyword clusters.
Go to www.naukri.com and type in your TJT or one of the main skills in the search field, hit ‘Search’. You should get a list of job openings. Start reading the openings until you have 5-10 openings that have detailed job descriptions, skills required etc. Sometimes the recruiters are lazy to list all the details. Keep looking at openings until you find the required number of detailed openings.
One you have enough openings, start studying them and make note of the following.
Job titles used, skills mentioned mandatory and preferred, technologies required, and responsibilities. Look for common themes, keywords etc. to get an idea. Refer to my example JD few pages above.
Note: The word ‘keywords’ is interchangeable with ‘skills’ where it makes sense.
Create a Word document with two sections,
Job titles and Experience/Skills/Responsibilities etc.
List all the keywords under the second section. We will be using these details in the next chapter.
If you want you can experiment by adding some experience in the search field to see how the JD differs from zero years experience. Also don’t bother putting in a location, it doesn’t matter for this exercise.
In the next chapter we will be using these keywords to create targeted resumes. We will add these keywords in sections like summary, projects, technical skills etc.
Next Lesson : Write Your First Real Resume
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