We have all been guilty of it. We get our resumes updated, we get it reviewed by a friend or a professional. We have everything we need condensed into 1-2 pages, adjusted the font and taken advantage of almost every inch of space to fit it all in and now we’re happy with our resume.

Then, armed with our resume template, we set off to apply for jobs! We submit that resume to tens or even hundreds of job postings.

Seems like the reasonable thing to do, right?

You may be surprised to know that it is not the reasonable thing to do. I call this “slinging stale resumes”.

Whenever you fill out a job application online and upload your resume, it goes into what is called an Applicant Tracking System, or ATS. The ATS is a database storing your information for hiring managers and recruiters to search through.

On average, a job posting can get anywhere from 300 – 7,000 resumes submitted though the ATS. That’s a lot of information for a recruiter to sift through so they use keywords to find the most relevant matches to their job posting.

Because recruiters are using keyword searches in their ATS to pull resumes to review and make selections for interviews or the next step in the hiring process, it’s possible your resume may never even be seen if it doesn’t have the keywords they’re using to find the most relevant matches.

I always say “they gave you the game in the job posting!”. They told you exactly what and who they were looking for. No hiring manager is going to guess what keywords YOU used in your resume when they’re filtering through the ATS. They’re going to use the keywords from the job posting. So you need to make sure that those keywords appear in your resume!

It’s a good idea to scan through the job posting and identify any important keywords and include them in your resume. If, for instance, a job posting mentions “collaboration” multiple times you should probably have the word collaboration in your resume at least once.

You don’t have to revamp your entire resume, just identify 3-5 keywords that are important and add them. to your resume, or switch out some of your current wording for keywords in the posting.

In The Remote Ready Bundle, I walk you through this process, in detail and share a really cool tool that makes it super easy to determine if your resume is a match for the job and identify the most important keywords in the job posting.

Now that you’re armed with this information, raise your right and repeat after me “I will not sling stale resumes!” This is just one of the 5 things you should do before you apply for a remote job. Be sure you’re being strategic before hitting that “apply now” button.