Page 4 - Combined KW samples

8 The Best Keywords for Resumes, Letters, and Interviews

Keywords in Job Search Letters, Interviews, LinkedIn
Profiles, and Other Career Communications

Keywords are important in all of your career marketing messages!

When writing cover letters, thank-you notes, bios, and other career communications,
you can scatter keywords throughout the text—in paragraphs or bulleted lists of
items—wherever they most comfortably fit and work well with the text that you’re
writing. Quite often, these documents are also put through electronic scanning
systems, so you want them to be rich with keywords. Just as critically, when people
read these documents, you want the right keywords to resonate with them and instantly
communicate that you are a qualified candidate.

SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT LETTERS: Just as resumes have changed over the
years and become more modern in style, format, and content, so have cover
letters. In this book, you’ll find samples of both “traditional” cover letters that
job seekers and professional resume writers have used for years, along with
e-notes—the modern version of the cover letter.
You can upload e-notes in response to job postings, just as with other cover
letters. And, when sending your resume via email, use the e-note as the text of
your email message, so that readers don’t have to click to open your letter. It’s
right there for them to read.
As you’ll notice from the samples, e-notes tend to be shorter in length than cover
letters. Both styles of letter should be filled with keywords that will resonate
with recruiters, hiring managers, HR professionals, and, of course, electronic
keyword scanning systems.

In interviews, your use of keywords conveys that you know your job, your industry,
and what’s important to your interviewer. Keywords are the language of your profes-
sion, and interviews give you the opportunity to speak that language fluently with the
people who have the power to hire you.

In the following chapters you’ll find suggested interview responses—loaded with key-
words!—to commonly asked interview questions. These scripts will give you good
ideas for incorporating your unique keywords into your own interview messages.

The use of keywords in your LinkedIn profile is just as important as in your resume.
Hiring managers and recruiters perform keyword searches on LinkedIn, looking for
candidates with specific skills and qualifications, just as they scan your resume for
keywords. Consider these additional tips when creating your LinkedIn profile.