It appears that job seekers aren’t the only ones growing increasingly frustrated with the Applicant tracking systems. According to Ryan Galloway at The Ladders, ” they are maddening ineffective at doing what they’re designed to do.” Avery interesting admission by a member of an organization that relies heavily on these technologies to find candidates.
For the millions of job seekers that are submitting resumes on a daily basis, this is the answer as to why you never get a call back after you submit your application online. The fact is that a person isn’t actually reviewing it, at least not initially.
The best way to get around the applicant tracking software is to try an outsmart the software itself. Most ATS look for candidates based on simple keywords. This means that you have to dress your resume down to just the essentials. Just the keywords that are critical to getting picked up by the system.
In addition to your “main” resume, you’re probably going to have to have at least two versions of each resume that you write. For example if you have a sales resume, you’re going to need two versions of it. One that is your traditional resume, and another that is just in .txt file format that is keyword rich.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that companies are planning to spend $6 billion on recruiting software. As of now the process is slightly broken, but it’s not going anywhere. The more job seekers understand how these tracking programs work the better off everyone will be in the long run, including recruiters and Hiring Managers
[Source: U.S. News ]
The Daily Tickr is a collection of some of the more interesting stories that you may be able to find elsewhere on the internet. I provide brief commentary on the topic at hand, and link out to the original article. I just want to make it as easy as possible for you to get access to the stories that may be of interest to you.
July 12, 2012
Misc