Have you ever wondered why your resume seldom makes it to the shortlisted candidates? The most probable reason could be that you may have employed a wrong applicant tracking system strategy. Hiring managers almost always use some applicant tracking system strategy to track top talent. Therefore, if applicants use wrong applicant tracking system strategy to submit resumes, they are rendered with higher chances their resume would be left out. One of the key features of applicant tracking system (ATS) is to scan the resumes for keywords. Applicants also need to understand how modern resume parsing works so that they can apply for jobs in an appropriate way. This article provide great insights regarding some assumptions related to resume parsing through ATS. Following is a brief of Do(s) and Don’t(s) that you should consider when drawing your drawing your resume w.r.t desired applicant tracking system strategy.
Design Your Resume For Machines And Not Individuals
Matt Singelman who is CEP at Burning Glass in Boston has some good and bad news for the prospective candidates. He says that applicant tracking system strategy is not about just looking for the keywords since a lot of systems are already equipped with it. An applicant tracking system provides job seekers with the best match that uses ‘contextualized’ instead of ‘semantic’ search.
Singleman says, also, that the bad news for the job seekers is that they ought to design such resumes that support customization. You must customize your resume for each job you apply and ought to emphasize your varied experiences and specific skills in accordance with the job requirements.
Search Technology Programs or Robots Are Not Replacing Humans
Many companies employ keyword-focused Cloud Technology and conventional screening software. The founder of TagCrowd, Daniel Steinbock creates the most popular tag cloud or simply word cloud. TagCrowd is a web application that visualizes the frequencies of words in any sort of text. Resumes are also par of it. Word cloud offers you to examine the document. It immediately creates a visual that focuses on words that are seen in a block of text.
Use Appropriate Formatting
One of the myths among applicants is that if you utilize a white colored font in your resume, you can cheat applicant tracking system by hiding plenty of keywords in the blank spaces. This approach is, however, entirely misleading. If you are also relying on it to attract recruiters, you must immediately abandon it. Applicant tracking system are intelligently designed and they can catch such tricks.
According to Steinbock, you should give some serious thinking to your resume for both human beings and technological audience. Consider the aspects that will convince and persuade the interest of hiring managers. Don’t ever misinform yourself that you can cheat ATS.
Bad Formatting Can Be Deleterious
Inappropriate formatting options can lead the recruiters to discard your resume quite instantly. Recruiters don’t usually want to spend their time to understand the nitty gritty of your rather complicated resumes. Its true indeed that first impression is the last impression. Recruiters actively use various ATS for their recruiting needs in the contemporary advanced world. Therefore, you shouldn’t build your hopes too much to pass through ATS if your resume is not in the right format. The reason is that ATS immediately rejects resumes that deviate from recommended formatting. Hence, when applying for jobs, focus seriously on creating ATS friendly resumes.
Appropriate Applicant Tracking System Strategy
One of the pivotal reason for the rejection of most of the candidates is the inappropriate utilization of applicant tracking system strategy. All around the world, different employers have their preferred principles. Similarly, different ATS have their own recommended practices. For instance, any certain ATS could be enabled to to read single-column resume only. Likewise formatting, chronology, design, style are other few to mention practices that applicants should always stick to if their ATS recommends them to follow these details.
Avoid Graphics and Visuals
The use of graphics can cause a negative impact on your resume. Hiring mangers are interested to analyze your experience and skills and not the fancy graphics. Using too many visuals in your resume guarantees the fate of your resume to be in pile of rejected applicants.
Kathy Downs, who is an accounting recruiting manager at Robert Half Finance in Orlando, says that many people tend to make extremely fancy resumes. A possible reason for this tendency could be that people like to appreciate the appearance of their resume in print. However, little do they know that ATS doesn’t work this way. When such resumes are processed by an ATS, they are immediately sifted for only useful or desired information. Beyond this point, all of your efforts in making your resume appealing aren’t going to benefit you in any possible way. Therefore, one should focus more on making ATS-friendly resume instead of attempting to make them look pretty.
