Recruiters see hundreds, if not thousands, of resumes. The burning question on every millennial’s mind is “How can I make my resume stand out?” A word cloud generator is a useful tool you can use to give your resume the little extra necessary to get you that job interview.
What is a Word Cloud Generator?
A word cloud generator is software that creates word clouds- those cool graphics you see on the web composed of a batch of words in varying sizes. You submit a body of text, hit generate, and get a word cloud. The software gives more prominence to words that appear more often, making them bigger and bolder in the graphic.
There are several options for word cloud generator software, one of which is Tagxedo. The following video is a tutorial on using this software to generate a word cloud.
How A Word Cloud Generator Can Help Your Resume
You’ve probably read a dozen times that recruiters spend mere seconds scanning your resume. Have you ever wondered what they gather about you from their micro-scan? If you knew that, then you could optimize your resume accordingly. That’s where the word cloud generator comes into play.
As mentioned above, the word cloud generator will make the words that appear most in the submitted body of text bigger and bolder. Submitting your resume as the text gives you a simple visual of your resume’s word frequency. It’s safe to assume the words that appear most are the words recruiters are associating with you. The question is: How can you use this knowledge to your advantage?
Choose Power Words
In any written document, word choice is the lifeblood of the message. You want to use power words to describe yourself in your resume because the very feeling these words create in the imagination when read will make you stick in a recruiter’s mind. Our friends at The Muse have an extensive list of 185 power words you can use to make your resume awesome, which you can check out here. Once you decide on your power words, the word cloud generator will help you make sure these are the most-featured words in your resume.
Use A Healthy Variety of Words
So you’ve found one power verb on that list you really love. You throw it in your resume a bunch of times and it’s big, bold, and beautiful in your word cloud. Unfortunately, using one word this heavily will actually hurt your chances of getting a job. Recruiters subconsciously associate more adjectives with more abilities, and a bigger vocabulary with more intelligence. Running your resume through a word cloud generator will show you if your word variety and frequency are properly balanced.
Make a list of 10 to 15 power verbs and throw them in a draft of your resume. Take that draft and run it through a word cloud generator and see what words recruiters will associate with you when they scan your resume. Tweet me at @BPucino to let me know how it goes!
