I am gong through an experience that is almost unique in my life; I’m unemployed. The only time that this happened to me in the past was for six weeks from the middle of October till the end of November in 1971.

We saw this coming so we were as ready as we could be financially when it happened. I was not ready at all when it came to job hunting. I was still thinking the old school way. I thought that you created a resume, looked for jobs that fit your skills and submitted the resume. After three months and only two interviews I am finally getting the message that it doesn’t happen like that anymore; at least not in the world of software development.

The first thing I had to realize is that it is a seller's market. There are plenty of software geeks out looking for a job these days. I have gone to several job fairs and got shocked into reality. In previous years I have been part of a company team that manned a job fair booth. Traffic was not much more than minimal, I had time to talk to the people who came by. That is no longer the case. I stood in line for forty-five minutes to talk to one person representing one company. She could not spend time with each candidate because there were so many. She took the resume and said she would check but that my best bet would be to apply for every position that was related and that may get my resume noticed by a hiring manager.

It is a seller’s market. I can see what is happening in the software development area. There are so many people looking that companies can afford to be very specific with their requirements. When there are a few candidates to choose from a hiring team may be flexible. If a candidate has years of object oriented programming experience but no experience in the specific language they are using; they may assume he or she can pick it up quickly enough. In nine out of ten cases that assumption would be correct. In today’s environment the hiring team does not have to make that assumption. They can demand exactly what they need and know that will get enough candidates to choose from.

I have learned the hard way that employers are being very specific in the search for candidates so job hunters have to be very specific in what they present to a company. This isn’t a new concept; I heard it several times before but for some reason, probably age, it went over my head. The tip that they gave and what has finally sunk in is the days of having one resume are over. Today a resume is just a long version of a cover letter; you need a specialized resume for every job you apply to. You must understand exactly what the employer is looking for and tune your resume to it. I’m not talking about fabrication that won’t help at all. I’m talking about presenting your skill set in a manor that fits what an employer is looking for. If an employer is putting emphasis on database development make sure your resume highlights your experience in that area.

Another thing that separates twenty-first century job hunting from the old days is that many hiring managers only look at a handful of the hundreds of resumes that they receive. They count on search software to float the most likely resumes to the top. Writers and web people are aware of the importance of tags. The right tag words in a story or an article is what gets it noticed. It is now the same with resumes. You need tag words in your resume that will bring it to the top of the pile. This takes some effort. You must read the job description and make sure the important words in the description are in your resume.

Cover letters are useful. Sometimes they will get a hiring manager’s attention but many times the hiring manager will skip the cover letter. Some hiring managers believe the cover letter is full of fluff and is a sales pitch. Those managers will go straight to the resume so it is the resume that has to make the sales pitch.