Why You’re Getting Rejected from Your Dream Job
Have you ever submitted a resume and received a rejection email soon after? Chances are your resume was never seen by human eyes. In fact, about 75% of applications are rejected by the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) automatically.
Companies receive thousands of applications for each job posting. It would be infeasible for a human to screen all those resumes.
Companies have been using applicant tracking systems (ATS) that scan and rank the resumes they receive for the job position. The ATS will scan your resume for specific keywords and match it to the job posting and determine if your application should be passed to the recruiter or rejected.
How to pass the ATS scan
Keywords
In order to make sure your resume passes the ATS scans, you need to make sure you are including enough keywords from the job posting. One way to do this is to use a word cloud generator like wordclouds.com. All you have to do is simply copy and paste in the job posting and the most common words will stand out.
Avoid any images, charts, or graphics
Another reason to not use one of those infographic style resumes is that they can sometimes not be ATS friendly. This is because the text can get scrambled and make it difficult for the ATS to read correctly. The best way to make sure your resume is ATS friendly, is to use the simple resume format containing bullet points.
Upload your resume as a PDF
A PDF file is generally the requested format that the ATS wants.
Label your sections correctly
The ATS will scan for the section headers to understand what information it is reading. Make sure that your work experience is listed under “Work Experience” and education under “Education.”
Minimize use of acronyms
Generally, the best practice is to spell out the entire word then list the acronym beside it. Some ATS cannot recognize what the acronym is.
How to test if your resume is good enough
There are a number of websites that can compare your resume against the job posting to tell you how it stacks up. Jobscan is the one that I have used in the past and it works well.
If you get a low match rate, then it is a sign that you need to work on improving your resume.