In modern day job search, whether you realise or not the moment you submit an online job application, you interact with the applicant tracking system(ATS). Whether you upload your resume or submit an online application/questionnaire, ATS does its job of making the information available to prospective employers ( OR NOT?). These sophisticated systems are inevitable for employers/recruiters & help them streamline the recruiting process by allowing them to navigate high volume of resumes & applications
For job seekers, ATS is sometimes a nightmare since it creates new hurdles & frustration for them. These job seekers experience resume black hole when they submit resume/online applications & never hear back from recruiters/prospective employers. This is actually ATS. There are a number of ATS systems used by companies & each system works differently. If you as a job seeker are not able to figure out common ATS behaviour, they are most likely to miss out an excellent opportunity/their resumes may be ignored entirely. Many of these behaviours revolve around keywords. ATS look for some specific skills & phrases in your resume which they use to search, rank & reject candidates.
There are a lot of companies offering ATS services for employers & no single service provider is used by all companies. We are going to discuss how top ATS companies manage resume keywords.
- Taleo: Used by leading organisations such as Starbucks, Taleo is the most widely used ATS system around. It dominates the ATS market with 25% market share. Taleo offers a wide range of functions & options that allow recruiters & organisations to customise & narrow down candidate pools & select candidates. Most of the job seekers are aware of “knockout” questions. These questions come at the beginning of applications & are meant to rule out applicants with obvious red flags. These questions can include:
- Legal– Are you legally able to work in the United States?
- Basic Qualification-Do you have at least 6 years of experience in commercial banking?
- Cultural fit– Do you prefer to work alone or in a team?
Giving wrong answers to questions will automatically lead to your rejection without the recruiter being aware of your application. These knockout questions are common across various ATS system providers however Taleo gives recruiters an ability to take auto rejection to the next level. Taleo allow recruiters to reject an application based on omission or frequency of keywords
For example, let us say a recruiter is using Taleo ATS to shortlist candidates for M&A. If the recruiter knows that the department does not have time to train new hires on building a financial model, they can set auto select or reject for candidates who do not have at least one mention of “financial model” in their resumes.
They can also trigger to highlight candidates who meet certain predefined criteria. For instance, the same recruiter can automatically highlight candidates who have at-least 3 mentions of “ financial model” in their resume.
- iCIMS: ICIMS is one of the leading ATS service providers & enjoys 7% market share. Some of its top notch customers include Amazon & Uber. When a recruiters searches the iCIMS candidate database for specific skills & keywords, results are sorted based on match percentage. Candidate’s rank is determined by the number of times the search term appears. For instance, a particular recruiter’s search for Social Media Marketing might show Joe Robert as 80% match since he has 4 mentions of Social media Marketing while Joel Martin is ranked lower since he has only one mention.
- Silk Road: Silk Road features hot match technology which automatically analyses & rates applicants resume against the job descriptions. Silk Road then places applicants in different categories based on at least 50%, 70% & 90% match. It is highly unlikely that a recruiter is going to see a resume of candidates who fall in lower category( <50% match).
Irrespective of ATS system which recruiters may use, the solution for job seekers remains the same.
So how can you beat ATS?
Read through the job description carefully to identify keywords that appear more often or seem to be important for the job. The below strategy is really vital to clear the ATS:
- Make sure that top keywords are in your resume.
- Use the most important ones multiple times in authentic way- keyword stuffing just for the sake of it is a red flag for recruiters.
- Use the exact keywords as they appear in the job description, matching plurals, or verb form
Are you looking for some career advice & guidance about how to write an executive resume or have a rebranded LinkedIn profile. As the founder & executive resume coach at Sushant Kumar Ventures, offering executive resume writing & LinkedIn profile writing services for modern day job seekers, I would be happy to chat to help you meet your career goals; Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/fbPEMJ3
