Avoid These Mistakes When Applying Online — ATS Friendly Resume
In a previous post, I described how to create a winning resume.
The only purpose of the resume is to get an interview, and when applying online, the first gate is an ATS.
🤖 What is ATS
ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System (also aka “ATS System”, serving as a RAS Syndrome example) — it is the software that the hiring company uses to manage the applicants for its open positions from the initial application, through the various interview stages until a rejection or an offer.
The software reads your resume and parses it into meaningful fields.
🤷♂️ Why should you care about ATS?
You need to make the ATS’s work easy, so it doesn’t reject you automatically!
Such automatic rejection might happen when these meaningful fields are configured to meet specific conditions but they are not met.
For example, the hiring manager might configure a specific job ad to auto-reject any resume that doesn’t include “Salesforce”, “Java” or an academic degree in Finance.
😌 Make your resume ATS-friendly
Format
Despite your wish to get noticed, using custom fonts, photos, tables, columns, headers and footers, graphs or visuals might make it hard for the ATS to correctly parse the information, leading to an automatic rejection.
As a hiring manager, I once received an application and it lacked many details in the ATS. I checked the LinkedIn profile of the candidate and saw that it had great potential so I interviewed him anyway. But most busy recruiters would just move on.
Keywords
These are exactly the important words, relevant to the specific job ad where the ATS might have been configured to auto-reject when absent.
Therefore, include technologies you worked with, tools you master, academic degrees and all relevant genuine information.
But do not create a single list of them. Rather mention them organically in the content of your responsibilities and achievements for human readability.
For example: “I was a member of an agile software delivery team using Java and React…”
Section titles, Job titles, Certificates
Again, the resume is an official document and we need to make it easier for the ATS to parse and categorize the information correctly, even when it might be boring.
Resumes are divided into sections such as “Employment” or “Education” — use commonly used terms.
The same goes for job titles. For example: “Chief happiness officer” at your current employer when applying for “Chief people officer” might not be understood by the ATS.
Another example is certificates. If you successfully finished an OKRs course and received a “Goals Master Certificate”, it may be better to use an “OKRs Practitioner Certificate”.
👩⚖️ Does the ATS determine my fate?
First of all, not all ATS’s or job ads are configured to reject automatically. The resume will be read by a human who will decide, and that’s why it should definitely be made for humans, as explained in the previous post about a winning resume.
Secondly, trying to trick the ATS by adding transparent text (white font), so it’s invisible to humans but visible to the ATS is not likely to work, as the systems are familiar with it and might change the color to black to expose it.
If you miss a critical condition, e.g. no master’s degree that is mentioned in the job ad as mandatory and you do believe you’re a great candidate — do not apply online. The ATS might reject you.
You could apply in other ways!
If you want to show how creative and unique you are, you could try sending your special resume via email or post (yes, paper). And even hand in in person at the reception. You might need to add written consent to process your application.
Network is a great tool for finding a job. Create such a network before you need it and keep it warm.
If you know someone in the company, a referral works very well.
Another option is to approach the hiring manager or recruiter on LinkedIn.
Summary
After all the hard work you put into writing and maintaining your resume, make this additional effort to increase your chances.
