How consumers make purchasing decisions has changed, and changed forever, been driven by a cute little algorithm introduced by Google named “Panda.”

Panda requires websites to provide information that demonstrates the benefits of a product or a service. If they don’t, they get buried. If they try old school black hat tactics, they get killed. First rolled out in 2011, marketers had to adjust to the realization that they are no longer selling someone something. Instead, they are providing potential customers with all the information they need to go to the store, pick up the phone or hit “Add to Cart.” It could be pricing, quality, detailed product descriptions, testimonials, videos, availability, low or no shipping costs, whatever. Google mandates that the most important thing the customer gets, besides your goods or services, is enough information to comfortably hit that button.

In January of this year Google finally went public with their policy, and now it is hard baked into how Internet search will work from now on;

Panda is an algorithm that’s applied to sites overall and has become one of our core ranking signals. It measures the quality of a site, which you can read more about in our guidelines. Panda allows Google to take quality into account and adjust ranking accordingly.

Content marketing rules today. It’s the single biggest transition in the business of marketing, advertising and selling since Don Draper put on a suit. It forces companies to be honest, open and fair to be competitive. It also allows anyone to compete on a (fairly) level playing field.

The same process of being open, informational and honest should be applied to looking for a new gig. In finding that new dream job, your content is king. But what content? All job seekers have resumes, cover letters and references. What will stand out for that HR professional who gets inundated with applicants? What with catch their eye? Below is the result of a survey of B2B consumers (Job searching is a B2B exercise) on what impacted their purchasing decisions the most.

You’ll notice that the least impactful content is the stuff the business produced talking about themselves. In the job seekers case, that represents their resume. That’s not what is going to get the interview. What is a differentiator is the rest of the categories on the chart. The stuff written or said about the applicant from peers, professional organizations or other third parties.

All of these should be  included somewhere on the resume, or on an easily accesible website where the HR manager and the job seekers next boss can review what they’ve accomplished.

The only effective item on the list that the job seeker has control over are the one I’ve circled, “case studies.” Listing business examples of successes in previous positions, that are salient to the job description are gold. They can be projects that changed the business, streamlining exercises, product rollouts, major projects, whatever can demonstrate that the applicant isn’t going in cold – all backed up by numbers. It’s a case of “been there, done that” that prospective employers are looking for.  As much as they say they love to train new employees, they would much prefer that the new kid on the block can hit the ground running.

It’s all about providing the consumer, in this case the HR person, with everything they need to say, “set up an interview.”

Content marketing is changing how business operates because it’s changing how consumers make decisions. It would be naive to think this type of conditioning hasn’t transferred to all facets of business. Like getting a job.