You’ve spent hours poring over resume-writing advice to craft the perfect, witty gem of a document. Yet when you send it to potential employers, you never hear so much as a peep back.
If that sounds familiar, then your resume may not be reaching hiring managers in the first place. It may have fallen afoul of the bots. Or, more specifically, the applicant tracking system. Reformatting your resume to please this piece of software may be all you need to do to land that perfect job at last.
What’s an Applicant Tracking System?
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is a kind of software that recruiters and employers use during the hiring process. It collects, sorts, scans, and ranks job applications for their open positions.
Today, approximately 98 percent of Fortune 500 companies rely on ATS software to help streamline their recruitment process. What began as a recruitment solution for large employers has turned into a commonplace tool for companies of all shapes and sizes.
Applicant tracking systems break the content of a resume down into categories. Then, they scan it for specific keywords to decide if it should go to the hiring manager. That means even a highly qualified candidate may be weeded out if their resume is not written and formatted with the ATS in mind.
How to Write an ATS-friendly Resume
Use the following tips to fine-tune your resume so you can get past the electronic gatekeeper bots.
Select the Right File Type for Your Resume
Contrary to popular belief, PDF isn’t really an ATS-friendly file type. If you’re asked to upload your resume to an applicant tracking system and “PDF” is listed among the file types you can, by all means, use a PDF version of your resume.
However, if the system does not specify which file types are compatible, play it safe and use a Word document in .doc or .docx format. Plain-text files are also very ATS-friendly. But, they limit your formatting options. To impress humans, as well as bots, stick with Word document formats.
Optimize Your Resume With Keywords
One of the best ways to get your resume safely through the ATS is to use job-related keywords. These keywords highlight your skills and experience from over the years that make you the perfect candidate for the position.
If you’re not sure which keywords to use, start by collecting three to five job postings for roles that interest you. Paste each job description into a word-cloud generator, such as Wordle. This helps to spot the words and phrases that appear most frequently. These are likely the keywords that recruiters are looking for.
Some applicant tracking systems determine the strength of your skills against the number of times that word shows up in your resume. Alternatively, others assign points against where the keyword shows up. To make a resume that is truly ATS-compatible, you’ll want to optimize your resume for both approaches.
Where to include them
First, create a section within your professional summary that lists your strongest hard skills and soft skills. If there is a common abbreviation for one of your proficiencies, such as SEO (search engine optimization), use both the full name and the abbreviation.
Second, sprinkle these same terms throughout your Work Experience or Education sections. This will show the ATS when you acquired and used that skill.
Some applicant tracking systems will calculate how much experience you have with a skill based on how long you held the job where that skill was used. If you worked at a job for five years and you mention SEO in the job summary, the ATS will assume you have five years’ worth of SEO experience.
If a skill is listed outside of a particular job summary, most ATS softwares will assign six months’ experience for that skill. This is why it’s so important to repeat your keywords throughout your entire resume, rather than just in a skill section at the top of the resume.
Use a Simple, Clean Resume Design
When it comes to resume design, less is more. Complex designs or unusual formats confuse most applicant tracking systems. And, they also annoy recruiters who can’t do their usual quick scan for the most important bits of information.
Most resumes fall into one of three format categories. Functional, chronological, or hybrid. Functional resumes focus on your skills and qualifications. Alternatively, chronological ones list your work history in – surprise – chronological order.
Hybrid resumes typically sport a professional summary section at the top of the document to outline your key skills and qualifications. Then, you combine this with a chronological Work History section that explains how you’ve used these abilities to produce results for your past employers.
Most applicant tracking systems do a better job at reading and interpreting chronological or hybrid resumes. This is because they rely on chronological data to parse the document. So, it’s best to avoid a functional resume format or you’ll simply confuse the software.
Formatting
Also, not all applicant tracking systems are able to read and parse information stored in the header and footer sections of a Word document. For that reason, it’s best to put important contact details such as your name, phone number, and email address in the body of your resume.
Bullet points are great for highlighting your accomplishments and qualifications. However, if you use an elaborate symbol or graphic for your bullets, your key selling points could get scrambled. Stick to the simplest bullet options, such as a solid circle, open circle, or square.
Lastly, Test Your Resume for ATS Compliance
There’s a quick and easy way to determine if your resume is compatible with an applicant tracking system. Just copy the content from your resume, paste it into a plain-text document, and review the results.
If the plain-text version is missing details from your original resume, has characters saved incorrectly, or looks scrambled (e.g. the heading for one section appears in the middle of another), then your resume will need further editing to beat the bots.
Beat the bots!
If you follow these tips, however, your resume is sure to fall into the hands of a real, human hiring manager — not into the resume black hole.
About the author: Wendy Connick is a regular contributor to TopResume, the largest resume-writing service in the world. TopResume offers a range of resume-writing services including expertly written and keyword-optimized resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles. Request a free resume review today to ensure your resume is ready to “beat the bots.”
