Are you making a career pivot? Do you need to rebrand yourself? Do you know what to do to market yourself for your future forward position?
As noted in the previous article, you completed all these steps so far:
- You decided to make a change.
- You have done a SWOT analysis of yourself.
- You know your passions and where you want to go… OR
- You have hired a coach to help bring clarity, so you know your next move.
- You have taken stock of your skillset and gaps of knowledge and have taken assessments.
- You have made some goals for learning or moving your pivot forward.
- You are ready to update your career documents – resume, LinkedIn, elevator pitch, networking plan, cover letter, accomplishment stories, positioning statement, department statement, value proposition, etc.
Now what? It’s time to research keywords that combine your unique individual skillset and the keywords of your next position, whether as a W-2 employee or as an entrepreneur.
Where do these keywords come from?
First of all, they come from you, doing a brain dump of all the things you are good at. It’s mainly going to be a list of hard skills, but there may be some soft skills.
If you are looking for a W-2 job, you can analyze the keywords in the job description. You would highlight text as you carefully read and use a free tool like WordArt or another text analyzer.
You can also use tools like Google Trends.
For keywords in LinkedIn, you need to use the job titles and keywords in LinkedIn’s database and see how words compare, by looking them up in the jobs tab. For example, compare “budget” to “budgets” to “budgeting” to find out the best version of this word to use in LinkedIn. The final choice may be different than the synonym you use when applying to a job description.
To learn more about keywords for matching job descriptions, attend the ATS workshops on June 1 or 11 by registering on links on the events listings page.
To learn more about keywords for LinkedIn, join the virtual workshops on LinkedIn Parts 1, 2, and 3 on June 6, 13, and 20, respectively, by registering on ccls.org.
Developing a keyword analysis is both an art and a science. You are much better off making informed decisions from data drive sets of keywords than just guessing words off the cuff. Do your research, but make sure you are hyper-focused on your future forward position so you are clearly branding yourself!
AUTHOR BIO
Lynne Williams is the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Area Great Careers Group, a 501(c)3 nonprofit with almost 6300 members and alumni providing career education and networking. Lynne also writes for vista.today, montco.today, and delco.today.
