Getting Your CV Noticed: Catering to Search Bots

I Love Job Offers T-shirt Too many candidates, chasing too few jobs mean that you have to be just a little bit sleeker than your average to score that prized interview. It's tough out there, I tell you.

If you're churning out the CVs, rapid-fire style, have a read below and see. You could be missing a trick.

Sending a CV online is quick, free and gets your an instant response, even if it's a ping back aknowledgement. Unsuprisingly it's the most common way of applying for a job but at the same time a CV sent by email runs the risk of just festering in an inbox.

Rather than sending your CV as an attachment, paste it into the body of the email. Attachments are often ignored because people are worried about viruses and wasting time downloading documents. With this in mind, stay clear of multi-media CVs. They may make you stand out and prove your technical credentials with their singing, all dancing displays but they're awkward to download, never mind format. 

In the subject line of the email add the reference number for the job and/or a brief description of your skills. This is especially important if you're submitting your details to a CV database where it's easy to get lost amongst the throngs.

Nouns, nouns and more nouns. As most candidate filling is done through database trawling and combing for technical skills, searches will pick up on nouns and match the terms to the spec and ignore the long-winded explanations behind them. Buzzwords are also key in getting your CV to stand out for a similar reason.

Your CV may be your personal marketing tool and as well as getting it to sell you to a prospective employer, it's got to cater to search enginge bots and database trawling.

Or you could just do this:

Pay a visit to Chinwag Jobs for a comprehensive list of digital and new media jobs and put the above article to the test.

Picture courtesy of SOCIALisBETTER. Some rights reserved.

20 January 2010 by Suzanne Morrow
Suzanne Morrow

Suzanne is a Senior Copywriter at leading UK digital agency Dog Digital. Established in 1996, Dog Digital is one of the most experienced and accomplished teams in the digital arena. Today Dog boast a star-studded international client portfolio and a trophy cabinet full of awards. They provide bright and innovative digital solutions that work. It's that simple.

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