If you think you needn't review your CV before sending..think again!!
#textanalytics #textmining #R #machinelearning
When was the last time you updated your resume? One month back..two month's back..or when you had switched to your current job 5 years ago..reasons for not updating resumes are plenty..you rely more on connections, you would rather have a video profile or a portfolio of creations..but still the question remains..why you don't keep updating your resume regularly?
Well, let us not get into the excuses part and understand what your resume tells your potential recruiter or a customer-to-be. Quantitatively your resume might be spanning across several pages or a single pager..it may be showing you how much of years you have spent in your domain..or your awards..or strong academics..or the prestigious colleges you have attended..when you send it across to an unknown person it goes out as a bunch of text strings and it is left to the other person as to what they should make of it..
One might argue that it is true for every written or spoken word..it is based on the target audience..but the problem related to resumes is that target audience changes every time you set your eyes on a company for potential employment..every member of your interview panel looks at your resume from yet another angle. How does one get over this problem? How does one decide the best way to write about himself/herself? How does one control the impact of the written resume on the target audience? Or is it simply left to the destiny or the word-smithy? Is there a magic wand that can help me here?
Well, not a magic wand, but some advanced analytics tools like Text Analytics can surely come to your rescue and get you started off..As I was pondering over my resume and thinking of making improvements, I thought of taking the analytical route..I applied text mining algorithms on my resume to find the most frequently used terms and I was shocked to see the following..
After looking at this, I further wanted to know what are the frequencies of the often repeated words in my resume and here is the answer
surprising as it may sound to many, we use a lot of articles, prepositions, and many other words that don't carry much meaning or weight when the 'ever so busy' recruiter scans the document for required skills..should you rather focus on keywords that matter to you and the technical/functional details of your work that may interesting for the recruiter? Well the answer is definite yes, although one must agree that there is a limit to this 'minimalism' when it comes to resume formatting.
The best shot is to set yourself a 'twitter word limit' for every text string that follows a header and a focus on including all the key words that represent your skills and capabilities..your recruiters are looking for what you know and are capable of and that should be the prime focus.
After killing a lot of 'and's and simplifying sentences as well as removing 'for's from many places..the word cloud looks like this
It is only now that I start seeing my core skills such as content development, documentation and newly acquired skill of analytics. As you can see there are still a few 'can's to go away as also the removal of repetitive word 'tool'..and I may just do away with 'are'..and yes the frequent occurrence of month names can be avoided with numbers..just so that recruiter remembers more about of my skills.. the journey goes on..
In short, there is always a scope for improvement in your resume and text analytics exercises may just get you started as it did in my case...what if I share my final and finished word cloud with a recruiter along with cover page and detailed resume? Will it just give the right clue to the recruiter in quick time?
Post Script
Point to be taken
Make sure to check for words like 'and','for','role','designation','can' in your resume and start minimizing their recurrence and not to forget too many repetitions of article 'the'?
You may want to add it to your checklist before you send it to the recruiter. These words might just be holding you back from quickly getting the attention of the right pair of eyes.
Hypothesis
As I performed the same analysis on the resume shared by my friend, I noticed that even he had used many articles and lot of 'extra' words that are not much important from 'resume scanning' and 'keywords' perspective. What might be the reason, I wondered.
# English, not being the mother-tongue/native language, we might be constructing long sentences, similar to the construction patterns in native Indian languages. The act of /need of fitting all information in one sentence might be giving rise to the usage of too many articles. Best way is to break the long sentences in shorter yet meaningful chunks.
#As we write about many complex ideas in resume, we might be feeling an urge to complete one complex concept in one sentence. We may just want to take extra efforts to write the complex idea in a few short and simple sentences. Again while keeping the grammar and subject-verb agreement intact!
I may just be hypothesizing here, as I need to apply this analysis to a few resumes of native English speakers. After few such analyses, we can be sure about the correctness of hypothesis.
Agree? Comments? Thoughts?
NB: If you are curious about how I performed text analytics, do ping me..
Aniket
When was the last time you updated your resume? One month back..two month's back..or when you had switched to your current job 5 years ago..reasons for not updating resumes are plenty..you rely more on connections, you would rather have a video profile or a portfolio of creations..but still the question remains..why you don't keep updating your resume regularly?
Well, let us not get into the excuses part and understand what your resume tells your potential recruiter or a customer-to-be. Quantitatively your resume might be spanning across several pages or a single pager..it may be showing you how much of years you have spent in your domain..or your awards..or strong academics..or the prestigious colleges you have attended..when you send it across to an unknown person it goes out as a bunch of text strings and it is left to the other person as to what they should make of it..
One might argue that it is true for every written or spoken word..it is based on the target audience..but the problem related to resumes is that target audience changes every time you set your eyes on a company for potential employment..every member of your interview panel looks at your resume from yet another angle. How does one get over this problem? How does one decide the best way to write about himself/herself? How does one control the impact of the written resume on the target audience? Or is it simply left to the destiny or the word-smithy? Is there a magic wand that can help me here?
Well, not a magic wand, but some advanced analytics tools like Text Analytics can surely come to your rescue and get you started off..As I was pondering over my resume and thinking of making improvements, I thought of taking the analytical route..I applied text mining algorithms on my resume to find the most frequently used terms and I was shocked to see the following..
After looking at this, I further wanted to know what are the frequencies of the often repeated words in my resume and here is the answer
surprising as it may sound to many, we use a lot of articles, prepositions, and many other words that don't carry much meaning or weight when the 'ever so busy' recruiter scans the document for required skills..should you rather focus on keywords that matter to you and the technical/functional details of your work that may interesting for the recruiter? Well the answer is definite yes, although one must agree that there is a limit to this 'minimalism' when it comes to resume formatting.
The best shot is to set yourself a 'twitter word limit' for every text string that follows a header and a focus on including all the key words that represent your skills and capabilities..your recruiters are looking for what you know and are capable of and that should be the prime focus.
After killing a lot of 'and's and simplifying sentences as well as removing 'for's from many places..the word cloud looks like this
It is only now that I start seeing my core skills such as content development, documentation and newly acquired skill of analytics. As you can see there are still a few 'can's to go away as also the removal of repetitive word 'tool'..and I may just do away with 'are'..and yes the frequent occurrence of month names can be avoided with numbers..just so that recruiter remembers more about of my skills.. the journey goes on..
In short, there is always a scope for improvement in your resume and text analytics exercises may just get you started as it did in my case...what if I share my final and finished word cloud with a recruiter along with cover page and detailed resume? Will it just give the right clue to the recruiter in quick time?
Post Script
Point to be taken
Make sure to check for words like 'and','for','role','designation','can' in your resume and start minimizing their recurrence and not to forget too many repetitions of article 'the'?
You may want to add it to your checklist before you send it to the recruiter. These words might just be holding you back from quickly getting the attention of the right pair of eyes.
Hypothesis
As I performed the same analysis on the resume shared by my friend, I noticed that even he had used many articles and lot of 'extra' words that are not much important from 'resume scanning' and 'keywords' perspective. What might be the reason, I wondered.
# English, not being the mother-tongue/native language, we might be constructing long sentences, similar to the construction patterns in native Indian languages. The act of /need of fitting all information in one sentence might be giving rise to the usage of too many articles. Best way is to break the long sentences in shorter yet meaningful chunks.
#As we write about many complex ideas in resume, we might be feeling an urge to complete one complex concept in one sentence. We may just want to take extra efforts to write the complex idea in a few short and simple sentences. Again while keeping the grammar and subject-verb agreement intact!
I may just be hypothesizing here, as I need to apply this analysis to a few resumes of native English speakers. After few such analyses, we can be sure about the correctness of hypothesis.
Agree? Comments? Thoughts?
NB: If you are curious about how I performed text analytics, do ping me..
Aniket
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