How-to instructions to get started with a brand new Resumeter account.

In today’s news, there were a lot of stories about people’s using, misusing, understanding and misunderstanding words. In fact, I’m a serious, beyond the norm, way-way-way beyond central-casting, word geek. I studied psycholinguistics at UC Berkeley. I got even more involved after that. My work with Preptel has always been about the semantic side of the technology, and about the words. And if today’s news, and today’s job seekers share one thing in common, it’s what’s happening with using, misusing, understanding and misunderstanding words. The effects for job seekers who misunderstand and misuse keywords in their job search are even worse than for the media and political set.

Bill’s friend referred him as a great candidate for a prime job where he worked. The HR assistant instructed Bill to submit his resume and they would start the process right away. Bill was stoked, but the phone didn’t ring. He called in to check, but they couldn’t find his resume. The assistant asked Bill to resubmit his resume. She confirmed that he could use a .pdf file format, or a .doc. Bill resubmitted it, and it showed up this time, but there was another problem. There was a very low rating on his resume. Could he rewrite it with more info from the job description in it, please? Bill got to work right away. Unfortunately, it took more than 4 hours to write his resume, and the office was now closed. When he resubmitted it the next day, there were still problems. Meanwhile, as he worked on his 3rd resume´ version, others were being submitted successfully for the job. By the end of that day, they had already scheduled 5 interviews, and he would be on the second call list for next week. Bill’s opportunity had slipped away. They hired someone else from the first round.

We’ve been tricked into thinking that job titles hold all the answers. But, any modern job seeker will tell you there are a lot of inappropriate jobs that show up on job board searches when you use a title as the keyword for your search. Some job boards now put “extras” on the job ads – related words that you might also want to search.

What happened to Rick’s resume? The changes he made the first time would have been enough to get him into the top 10. Unfortunately, Rick uploaded a .pdf resume. Reading the .pdf file, the software read headers first, then content. The software read keywords eventually, but it read one year of experience – the time spent on his last job.

Preptel is now featured on LegalCareerSite.com

Preptel is now featured on InsuranceCareerSite.com

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