Many of my clients have expressed the frustration of not being considered for a position that they felt fit their experience and expertise.
One unfortunate truth is that in today’s world, often your resume is actually never even considered by a human being, but by a sophisticated, turbo-charged database called the Applicant Tracking System (ATS).
Nearly every major company uses an ATS to create efficiencies in the hiring process. ATS is a software application designed for recruitment tracking purposes and to manage resume data. If your resume or online application does not include key qualifying phrases and information which an ATS is programmed to look for, your resume could end up in the equivalent of an electronic resume landfill.
With companies receiving hundreds of resumes daily, an ATS collects job-seeker information from data fields that are submitted on the company website, from applicants who apply on Internet job boards or data that is easily retrieved by scanning resumes. An ATS will programmed to sift through and purse this data to identify key phrases that best match skill sets, years of experience, levels of expertise, industry experience, technical skills and other words and phrases.
Based on this, the most qualified candidates for the position are submitted to the HR department for consideration. Yes, it's not a perfect system, but the odds of finding good candidates are still high and creates enough of a success rate that the effeciencies justify the use of an ATS.
Bottom Line. You can easily format your resume to be “ATS friendly” and increase your chances of being hired. Look closely at the job description and make sure your resume calls out key phrases in its summary statement. If you are unsure, use a professional resume writer or a job-seeking consultant to assist you in rewriting/reformatting your resume.
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