ATS: also known as Applicant Tracking Systems are something that many people have heard of but few know how to proceed. These are programs that assist companies and organizations in filtering applicants and collecting and organizing applicant information.
Here are some tips to navigate when you suspect an organization is using ATS. (Hint: many large companies use ATS.)
First, stick with traditional fonts such as Times New Roman, Calibri, and Georgia. If you use a font outside of the norm or italics and there is a chance that your information will be unreadable.
Next, make sure to use the same key words from the job posting. This is advice that we always give, but it is even more relevant in ATS because there is a high chance your resume will be “scored” accordingly. For a rudimentary example, if you put ‘managed a team of 10’ instead of ‘team manager’ you could potentially be losing out on points. You may still be gaining points for having each word separately, but if you want the highest score possible it’s best to use their language in the same way. The reason your score is so valuable is because the hiring manager will likely only look at the top scores, so if you don’t rank at the top your resume and/or cover letter may not ever get viewed by human eyes! Hopefully this goes without saying, but you should never lie or include qualifications that are not true.
When creating your resume, stick to a plain old Microsoft Word document. Do NOT use a template because the programs cannot read what is in graphs or added text boxes.
Dates should not be abbreviated, so ‘Jan. 2020-Feb. 2021’ won’t do, either write out the whole month or use ‘01/2020-02/2021.’
It seems like there are many rules when creating a resume, but really most of these things are minor changes so that your resume has the best possible chance of scoring well enough to afford you an interview.
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