Beat the Applicant Tracking System with these resume tips

Imagine this: you found the perfect job online and applied for it. You waited for three weeks, only to hear nothing from the employer at the end. What went wrong with your job application?

The problem could be with your resume. A majority of employers in the world use Applicant Tracking Systems to filter the job applications they receive for a single position. The only way your resume won’t be tested by an ATS is if you’re applying for a small or medium-scale business. ATSs help hiring managers sort through piles of resumes fast to find the perfect candidate who checks all the boxes.

The ATS scans all the resumes an employer receives for a particular set of keywords. This means that your resume must have all the right key terms for it to ever even be seen by a human. The only way for you to pass the ATS test is through keyword optimization of your resume.

So, how can you optimize your resume with the right keywords? It’s quite easy to do. First, you must take a good long look at the job description that the employer has posted. You will spot some key qualifications, education requirements, skills, and experiences that the employer has demanded. These terms will most likely be the keywords they use for the ATS. Therefore, you must use the exact same words to describe your skills on your resume.

For example, if the job description asks for, “5 years of experience supervising production lines,” you shouldn’t say that you have “experience managing production.” Your resume must also read, “Over 5 years of experience supervising production lines.”

ATSs are becoming more advanced day by day. Some ATS have the ability to recognize synonyms for certain skills. However, you shouldn’t take a risk on your job application hoping to encounter an advanced ATS.

When you keyword-optimize your resume, you will have to create several versions of your resume for each job you apply for. This will like a daunting task at first, but once you get the hang of adding keywords to your resume, it will become easier.

ATSs prefer when your resume is formatted properly. Your resume needs to be typed in a single column for it to pass through the ATS successfully. ATSs can’t parse the information you present in columns. If you have used multiple columns for your resume, a large amount of your qualifications would be neglected by the ATS.

You need to avoid fancy fonts when you optimize your resume for the ATS. The system usually finds it difficult to read fonts that have swirls and curves. It is best to use a professional-looking font or two to write your resume. You shouldn’t get too many fonts involved as well. One or two fonts in a size between 10 to 12 pt should do the trick.

When you select bullets for your career history, you must always go with round or square bullets. Avoid using fancy bullet points such as arrows and boxes.

Visual elements such as pictures, graphs, and graphics also mess with the ATS’s ability to read your resume fully. You must remove such elements from your resume. If you have added a picture to the background of your resume, the entire content of the resume could get rejected.

Most importantly, your resume must be saved and uploaded in the correct file format. Refer to the job description for this information. The employer would always list the type of file format accepted for job applications.