I could hear the anger in her voice, even though we’d never spoken. I could see the frustration in her eyes without ever meeting her face to face. She’d just been rejected again by another impersonal email from a company where she thought for sure she was a shoo-in candidate.
She’d researched the company, after all. She knew their stock value. She knew who the key players were, and exactly what the job required. She carefully made up her cover letter to talk about her objective statement and how it matched what she wanted and what the company wanted. Then she added some nice swirled borders around her resume and slanted the dates of employment in cursive font to make it pretty enough to notice.
The scenario above is repeated by millions of job seekers every day. What they don’t realize is that the very efforts they so carefully put into their resume and cover letter – the painstaking time spent making it look perfect – is precisely the reason that up to 75% of great candidates get rejected immediately after applying for a position.
If you’ve been out of the job market for awhile, look around: everything is online these days. From retail to executive management, candidates are directed to a kiosk or an Internet link to apply for jobs. Gone are the days where one could go into an organization with a paper resume, ask to speak with a manager, fill out a paper application, and actually get some face time.
Sadly, in our technology-frenzied culture, the tools which have been designed to make our lives easier sometimes work against us. It’s created a fracture in our society; we are becoming less human as a result. Getting past the computerized gatekeeper to a real, live person is an exercise in futility – unless you know about how ATS works.
As a resume and job search expert, I will give you inside tips on how to beat the ATS.
1. What is the ATS?
ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System. It’s used by most companies’ HR departments to manage the sometimes thousands of applications received for one position. HR departments are chronically understaffed. Therefore, ATS began appearing right before the downturn of the economy, around 2006. The leading ATS is Taleo. Most others stem from it; iCIMS is another. The systems use an algorithm – a complex set of codes – to evaluate a candidate’s resume before a human eye ever sees it. It looks for keywords that match the job. It looks for skill sets that closely resemble the skills mentioned in the help wanted ad. The more “hits” it finds, the higher your resume scores. If you score a high enough percentile, you receive the green light and your resume moves on to the recruiter.
2. What does the hiring manager see? Do they see my whole resume?
No. This one surprises many job seekers. But what the hiring managers sees, once the ATS has parsed your every resume word, is something very different from your original resume:
Your keywords are highlighted as a match for the job requirements. Your name, education, and job titles are also highlighted. If they’re not in the optimized spots in the resume, the system may even read them incorrectly.
Experts generally agree that the simpler the font, the easier it is for the ATS to read. That means no borders. Plain fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial, Candara, Book Antiqua, or Georgia are all good bets to use.
Be careful with how your job titles and dates are presented. Put titles to the left, and dates to the right. That way there is less chance that they are missed.
Emphasize accomplishments with bullet points – but keep them simple. A simple dot (●) or even an asterisk (*) is fine.
3) I put everything they asked for on my resume. I have my title, experience, and education. I’m a professional. So what’s wrong?
Again, the adage of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) applies here. If you’re a senior network engineer, put that as your title and be consistent. If your title is different but means the same as senior network engineer, you can beat the computer by putting it like this:
Senior Architect (Senior Network Engineer), January 2001 – Present
That way the ATS picks up the right keywords and doesn’t toss you because you don’t have the correct title.
I also caution against fancy section names. If you have accomplishments, by all means put them. But don’t label it something like “Awards & Accomplishments & Recognition Received.” Just put “Key Accomplishments.” Similarly, the ATS will be looking for your work history and experience. “Professional Experience” works if you have it; if you are younger or in school, “Work History” is more appropriate.
4) How can I make sure I stand out against the 100 other people applying to the same job?
You can always send a hard copy of your resume to the recruiter – you should always find the hiring manager’s name by looking it up on LinkedIn or the company website. That way it is presented the way that you want, and so many job seekers don’t do this that it may make you stand out (because, as I said, the concept of paper resumes and face time is dead). A personal letter that lands on a busy HR recruiter’s desk may or may not be appreciated. Some candidates hear nothing because the letter gets tossed in the trash without a glance. Others get a call because snail mail is so rare that a hiring manager will take the time to read it. I say you have nothing to lose by trying snail mail; however:
DO NOT be a pain and call the recruiter constantly.
DO include your contact information and follow up a maximum of three times, and only once per week.
To stand out, however, is really a matter of soul-searching. How much do you truly match the job requirements? Tailor your job search to the resume, not the resume to the job – make sure your resume doesn’t just parrot back the job description. Instead, smartly use the key terms in the ad, but tailor it to you. That is how you stand out – and if you can’t do that without stretching the truth, don’t apply. Hiring managers will see through it.
5) I’ve heard some advice from other career experts about “gaming the system” with invisible font. Can I do that?
Some experts have in fact advised their clients to keep their online resume white, and cut and paste the exact job description and requirements to the bottom of their resume in white, so that it’s invisible to the eye but gets ranked in the systems. However, not only is honesty the best policy – but these systems, flawed though they are, are now getting smart to that and check for unusual headers or hidden text. So I suggest not doing this, or if you do, it’s at your own risk. Things like this can get you blacklisted at a company where you may qualify for several jobs.
6) So how can I win?
At the end of the day, if you’re secure in who you are as a professional, if you have the credentials to back up the title on your resume, if you have a simple font with accomplishment bullet points, and if you include all possible keywords for your industry, you have a much better shot of getting through the ATS. There’s no 100% guaranteed foolproof way to crack the code. However, you can bend it by being smart, being honest, keeping it simple, and staying true to yourself.