Your resume is the precursor to you getting in the door of the companies and subsequent career that you wish to pursue. Similar to when administrative assistants block sales representatives from getting to the decision maker, a HR representative can use any resume flaws they wish as justification to prevent you from seeing the decision maker who, in the end, is going to make the final decision. Thus, one could refer to them as the "Job Gatekeeper."

The entire job search gets quite a bit more lucid when you look at hiring and resume vetting from the their perspective. Essentially, the human resources employee is putting himself or herself "out there" every time they recommend that a decision maker pursue a particular resume and the applicant who can be behind the piece of paper.

Digging A Little Bit Deeper
Remember, to formulate the proper resume and get past the initial screening, you must think like the HR representatives. In today's economy, at the majority of companies, there is a lingering, though rarely discussed threat of getting laid off. It is precisely for this exact reason, just like any other employee, that human resource professionals are afraid of making mistakes.

Below, you will find some resume tips that will help ease the fear of these individuals and help you obtain your goal of getting past the "Job Gatekeeper."

Who, What, Where and Why Questions
Anyone who is trying to strengthen their resume should continuously ask the "Who, What, Where and Why?" questions. Let's take someone who did Accounts Receivable as one of the required daily tasks. Now, let's put the questions into action and see what we come up with:

"Performed accounts receivable transactions interacting with CFOs of small to mid size insurance, financial and equity research firms throughout the Bay Area."

No More Wishy-Washy Words
I feel comfortable making the assumption that everybody is familiarized with the capabilities of Microsoft Word and the software's ability to formulate more cohesive and descriptive adjectives, nouns, adverbs and verbs than most humans, including myself.

As a job seeker and resume writer, you must get rid of words such as "great" or "best" and begin to get more descriptive with more intelligent sounding verbiage. Being "great" means little to nothing. Conversely, being an "expert" holds a little more weight.

Keeping The Objective Parallel With The Job You're Going For
Spawned from the words of John F. Kennedy, a job seeker must then think, "Ask not what the targeted company can do for me, but what I can do for this prospective employer." If you write your resume from this perspective, the Job Gatekeepers are going to seemingly disappear. Putting this theory into use, we can now formulate an "Objective."

"The ability to be employed with a company that, to achieve its goals actively requires help from a seasoned, expert software developer who possess extensive knowledge of JAVA, SQL and PHP, in a precise manner, parallel my career objectives..."

In closing, any job seeker who heeds and encompasses the aforementioned tactics into their resume writing process will swiftly witness an elevated employer response rate.

Ken Sundheim runs KAS Placement, a sales and marketing staffing agency specializing in helping both U.S. and International mid to large size firms form sales teams from hiring the executive level sales manager to helping recent college graduates transition to a business development role. On his free time, Ken is a public speaker and likes to read non-fiction. New York Marketing Staffing Agencies http://www.kasplacement.com/nyc-marketing-staffing-agencies.php / Marketing Recruiters Los Angeles Headhunters http://www.kasplacement.com/los-angeles-marketing-headhunters.php