What Are Hiring Managers Looking For (Besides The Truth)?

[Brad Kenney]

How's this for a disconnect?

According to a recent CareerBuilder survey, 8 percent of workers admitted to stretching the truth on their resumes, while nearly half (49 percent) of hiring managers reported they caught a candidate lying on their resume.

So basically, those evil 8% are ruining the reputations of the rest of us upstanding candidates -- for shame!

According to the same survey, hiring managers "often use electronic scanners to rank candidates based on a keyword search of applications, so make sure to pepper keywords from the job posting into your resume as they apply to your experience."

The terms employers search for most often are:

* problem-solving and decision-making skills (50 percent)
* oral and written communications (44 percent)
* customer service or retention (34 percent)
* performance and productivity improvement (32 percent)
* leadership (30 percent)
* technology (27 percent)
* team-building (26 percent)
* project management (20 percent)
* bilingual (14 percent)

What about "ethical"? Although, considering the stats presented above, such a search might leave you unable to staff up your open positions.

Are these your most-valued general search terms for employees-to-be? If not, your HR department's searches might be out of alignment with your needs.