Resume for Naukri and other job portals: the profile is searched, the file is read

Two things, not one

On Naukri, and on portals such as foundit and LinkedIn, you give the site two things: a profile made of fields, and a resume file. They do different jobs. Recruiters search the portal's candidate database — Naukri's is called Resdex — with keywords and filters, and a filter can only use a field: total experience, current location, notice period, current salary. A notice period written only inside your resume file cannot be filtered on. The file is what the recruiter opens once your profile has come up, and from then on it is read by a person like any other resume.

The fields worth getting right

• •Resume headline: the one line that sums you up at the top of your profile. Make it the job you do, for how long, and the specialty — “Java backend developer, 4 years, Spring Boot and microservices, payments” — rather than “Seeking a challenging opportunity”.
• •Key skills: the names tools actually go by, because that is what a recruiter types. “Spring Boot”, not “Spring framework knowledge”; “Tally Prime” and “GST returns”, not “accounting software”.
• •Employment and education: every field, with the same titles and dates as the resume. A profile and a file that disagree look careless at best.
• •Notice period, current and expected salary, and preferred locations: accurate, because they are filtered on. A short notice period is worth stating wherever the portal lets you.
• •Profile summary: a short version of your resume's summary, in the same words.

Keep salary on the portal and off the resume itself. The portal shows it to recruiters searching it; the resume file is forwarded to hiring managers, other agencies and inboxes you will never see, and a figure you gave once keeps travelling with it.

The file you attach

Naukri takes a Word file or a PDF. Either works if the file contains real text in a single column — a PDF exported as an image, or a two-column design, reaches the recruiter's software as something harder to read than it looked when you made it. Name the file after yourself; it will be downloaded and forwarded under that name.

Everything that makes a resume good anywhere applies to this one, because once your profile has come up in a search, a person decides from the file: the most recent role first, bullets that start with what you did and end with what changed, and a number wherever an honest one exists.

Keeping it current

Recruiters can narrow a search to candidates who have been active recently, so a profile untouched for a year drifts out of the searches that matter. Revisit it when you change jobs, finish a certification or your notice period changes — and upload the resume again when you do, so the two keep saying the same thing.

What not to do

• •Hidden keywords — skills typed in white, or in tiny type at the foot of the page. They are invisible only on screen: any text extraction shows them, including the one a recruiter's software does, and a recruiter who sees them stops reading.
• •Every skill you have heard of in Key skills. A search that brings up your profile for something you cannot do produces a phone call that ends badly.
• •Two profiles. Duplicates confuse the recruiter who finds both, and the older one is always the one with the wrong notice period.
• •Anything you could not show a document for. Indian employers routinely run background verification — previous employers, dates, degrees — before or after joining, and a mismatch there can cost an offer.

You can see what a portal's software gets from your file: /check extracts the text from a PDF or Word file in your browser and shows which fields came back — hidden text included.

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