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Nowadays, recruiters are no longer the ‘first eyes’ to review a job application. This is especially true for big-name corporations that need to fill numerous open job positions quickly. When you apply at these companies, your application papers will likely go through an applicant tracking system (ATS) before a recruiter or hiring manager reads through it.
An ATS is a software application that can sort through thousands of resumes very quickly to find potential job candidates. These systems primarily use keyword matching to scan and score resumes, similar to how a search engine ranks websites. The more keywords you hit, the higher score you’ll get, and the better your chances of being shortlisted will be. And, on the contrary, if you don’t score well, your resume will never make it past the ATS to be seen by human eyes.
Reports say that as much as 75% of resumes end up in the recycle bin because of these systems. If you fail to make it past an ATS, it doesn’t matter if you have stellar qualifications—you’ll never get the job. Thus, it is essential to make your resume ‘ATS-optimized’ to avoid this fate.
In its early incarnations, an ATS was pretty easy to beat. Just stuff your resume with relevant keywords, and you’ll be on your way to the next step of the application process. But like any software, ATS has evolved with the times, becoming more challenging to overcome with each new version. Try keyword- stuffing your resume today, and you’ll end up blacklisted.
And so, in the modern sense, an ATS-optimized resume is the one that not only contains the right keywords, but is also properly formatted, free of any grammatical and spelling errors, and written in a formal and easily comprehensible manner.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to beating ATS. That said, you need to write your resume in a way that considers not just ATS algorithms, but recruiters and hiring managers as well. And so, your resume needs to:
Optimizing a resume for ATS is a complicated job that requires in-depth knowledge of how these systems work. A professional resume writer will know what to include in your resume, and how to structure it properly so that information is conveyed in a focused and cohesive manner. If you think your resume is struggling to make it past an ATS, it may be time to seek out an expert’s help.
Applicant tracking systems are here to stay, and there’s not much you can do about them except to roll with the punches and beat them at their own game. An ATS-optimized resume is your most potent weapon against these algorithms.
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