Okay, so you found that perfect job that you have been searching for and you are clamoring to send the company your resume in hopes of landing an interview. You feel fairly confident that you appeal to hiring managers and that scheduling an interview is a sure thing. Before you get ahead of yourself and fire off your resume to the company, stop and go over the content in your resume. The one thing you overlooked is that hiring managers are not the ones making the decision anymore as to whether or not to interview you for the job. The applicant tracking systems are the ones “making the decision”. As technology has advanced over the years, so has the field of human resources. Companies utilize applicant tracking systems to scan, store, categorize, and select applicants for interviews. By utilizing applicant tracking systems, companies streamline the entire process of creating a candidate pool that contains applicants that fit their needs for the job. Electronic searches are conducted using specific keywords and the applicant tracking systems flag all of the resumes that have those specific keywords as “hits”. For example, say you want to apply for a job as a Nurse. If your resume contains keywords like accounting, finance, administration, and budgeting, the applicant tracking systems will not flag your resume as a “hit” because those are not the keywords the company uses as search criteria. If your resume contains keywords like clinical experience, managed care, treatment plans, and medication administration, then you will get many more “hits” using your resume. One of the simplest ways to make it through the initial screen out process and maximize your interview opportunities is to use the proper keyword optimization strategy so you can get more “hits” with your resume. This strategy is the difference between getting a job in 1 month vs. 1 year simply because you were strategic in your word selection on your resume.