There is a little known secret in the job recruiting world. If you don’t post your resume where Google can find it, your resume won’t show up in a Google search. In other words, your resume is invisible. Most start-ups and small companies use Google searches exclusively to find candidates online. This is not good news for the job seeker that post their resumes exclusively to Job Boards.
The problem is that most Job Boards are not searchable by Google. So the resumes that are posted on them are not available.
Some example resume search strings for Google:
- (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) C++ (california OR ca) -job
- (intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) human resources (california OR ca) -job -sample -template
If this string is entered as a Google search, you would see resumes that are not invisible on the internet.
The string basically says return results that contains the word resume in the URL or in the Title and contains the key words we’re looking for.
I had to filter out unwanted results. So, I added “-job” to the search string. The “-job” tells Google to filter out results that contain “job”. We weren’t looking for sites that have jobs, we were looking for pages that contained real resumes.
Click here to see more detailed information on Advanced Google operators.
Making the resume Visible
If you performed one of these Google resume searches, you probably noticed that a few results might be from public job boards. Most of the results were a word doc, pdf or HTML file that was uploaded to a search-able website. Most of these searchable websites are personal blogs.
Three places to make a resume Visible
- A personal website that is searchable by Google
- No expiration
- Google Docs that are shared
- Jim Littlefield has a blog called Small Pasture that shares information about Online Resume tips.
- Online resume using Google docs
- Online resume tips
- No expiration
- Craigslist.org
- Expires in 30 – 45 days
Search Engine Optimization for Resume Visibility
Use the resume search string with Google to determine the visibility of your resume. Once your resume is visible, you can work on improving its position in the search results.
