Is your resume ATS-friendly?
ATS: what are they?
ATS is short for Applicant Tracking System.
Applicant Tracking Systems are software products used by recruiters and employers to collect, screen, organize, and manage job applications.
A feature of modern ATS software is their ability to automatically scan application documents such as resumes and cover letters, and extract relevant information by means of Artificial Intelligence (AI) or keyword matching algorithms.
Why your resume must be ATS-friendly.
For every job opening, recruiters and hiring managers receive hundreds (if not thousands!) of applications. With such a large number of applicants, it becomes impossible to read and evaluate every single application. Therefore, recruiters and hiring managers typically leverage ATS software to screen out a large number of candidates that are automatically determined to be not suitable for the position.
What does this mean for you? If you don’t optimize your resume for ATS screening, your application may be automatically screened out (even if you are qualified for the job!). If an ATS determines that you are not a match for the job, it’s the same as if you never applied.
How to make your resume ATS-friendly.
There are several tips to make your resume ATS-friendly. For example, this article offers some good advice including:
Limiting the content of your resume to text. For example, it’s generally safer to avoid including images since some ATS software may not be able to scan and process them correctly.
Preferring widely supported file formats such as PDF of Word documents.
Most importantly, you will have to slightly revise your resume for every job you apply to. The resume that you submit as part of a job application should be a great fit to the description of the job you are applying to.
The process of writing and maintaining multiple versions of your resume certainly requires additional effort on your part, but remember that you too can leverage AI! For instance, you can use an assistant such as ChatGPT to facilitate your work when you need to modify your resume and match it to a particular job description.
How to test whether your resume is ATS-friendly.
Even if you have a version of your resume that is tailored to the job you are applying to, it’s not time to submit your job application quite yet! Instead, you should first test how ATS-friendly your tailored resume actually is.
Fortunately, there are online tools that allow you to upload your resume and a job description, and get actionable feedback on how to further improve your resume and make it even more ATS-friendly for that job. For example, take a look at Jobscan. Note that tools like Jobscan offer many core features for free, but they may require that you buy a subscription for more advanced features.
Conclusion.
Making your resume ATS-friendly is a very important step of your job search. You should spend some time and effort working on it to avoid the risk of being screened out by an ATS even when you are a good fit.
We hope that this short article helps you take a good first step towards making your resume ATS-friendly. But if you need additional support, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!
