What is Your Resume Really Saying? Find out with a Resume Word Cloud
Recruiters do not read resumes, they scan them. It's been said that a recruiter spends less than 30 seconds looking at each resume before they reach a conclusion. Recruiters are also actively looking for reasons to reject your resume. Resumes are not, however, written for scanning. They are written to convey a complex summary of what value you offer. Here's a way cool thing
you can do right now to see what your resume is saying: Create a Resume
Word Cloud.
Here's how.
1. Open your resume. Here's mine.
2. In your resume, select and copy all the text. Do a Select All
(Apple-A or Control-A depending on your computer), then Copy (Apple-C
or Control-C).
3. Go to Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/create and click in the box under the words "Paste in a Bunch of Text"
4. Click the Go button under this text box. Wordle will chug for a
second or two and return you with a work of art: Your Resume as a Word
Cloud! Wordle will remove common words like "and, the, or, etc."
Here's a word cloud for my resume:
5. You can right-click on a word to remove words you don't want to
appear. For example, I don't need "Dan" showing up so I can remove
that. You can also customize the colors, orientation, etc. One
down-side is that it doesn't take into consideration phrases.
I'd like to ask you to post your word cloud on my site for job seekers: www.betterjobsfaster.org.
I'm interested in testing the power of online social networking, so
please forward this to as many job seekers as you can so we can amass a
resume word cloud quilt!
To make an image of your resume word cloud:
Take a screen shot of your resume word cloud:
PC Instructions: Why do PC's make things so difficult?
Mac Instructions: Command+Shift+4 - Capture dragged area and save as a file.
Join the Flickr Better Jobs Faster Resume Word Cloud Group and share your resume cloud online.
You can also add your Resume Word Cloud here by replying to this message, clicking on the image icon, and uploading your Resume Word Cloud to the Resume Word Cloud Image folder on Better jobs Faster.
Look forward to seeing your resume cloud!
Best wishes,
Dan.
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I just did mine. This was really a fun exercise to see what really "stands out" about you.
This is really neat.
Nice stuff!
Another version of my resume with list of projects/work
LinkedIn Groups
Saying: Create your Resume Word Cloud and See"
This is a great idea, and both fun and informative! You can see your resume
very abstractly, and the words that are most often repeated will have the
biggest font size. What's your resume's consistent message?
And yes, you
can have phrases - go into the text file and replace the spaces between the
words of the phrase with tildes ~ and the phrase will be considered whole. Be
sure to do this for every instance, the program is completely literal (case
counts, too).
Here's Susan Paskowitz' Resume Word Cloud. A passionate product manager!
Every time I do it, no matter what I put in, it gives me these results:
I guess this is what I really want recruiters to see anyways.
Cool stuff..... Thanks Dan !
I need to build this into an ATS system for a quick glance at someone.
Brian,
I agree, that would be way cool. Let's talk. I'd like to streamline folks abilities to get their Resume Word Clouds visible. Let me know your ideas.
Best,
Dan.
LinkedIn Groups
saying? Find out with a Resume Word Cloud"
Dan,
I have been playing with this and I believe if you set the word
count to 100 you get a sharper and less cluttered word cloud. I do not believe
that most recruiters are even looking for a 100 key words.
For what it is
worth,
Wes
Posted
by Wes Lake
LinkedIn Groups
saying? Find out with a Resume Word Cloud"
hilarious, I like it
Posted
by Jason Chu
LinkedIn Groups
saying? Find out with a Resume Word Cloud"
I have a couple of different resumes that I use depending on the job I'm
posting to. One comes across way better than the other in this "cloud". Kind of
a neat idea. Thanks for sharing.
Posted
by Karin Errington
saying? Find out with a Resume Word Cloud"
Wes, you are right, when us recruiters read a resume, we are not looking for
that many key words and if the certain key words are not in the first job or
two, the resume goes in pile B for review later. Moreover, it is useful though
with the proliferation of the ATS for most companies. Actually, often in
corporate recruitment, by the time the recruiter gets it, it has been parsed and
categorized..Regardless, this is a great creative view of one's
resume!!!
Good Stuff!!!!
Posted
by Steven G Davis, LION
I like it... this is very good stuff! Thanks for sharing,
Erwin