There are two parties involved in the preliminary stage of reviewing an application; the recruiter and the Application Tracking System (ATS), and it’s a good time to snitch on ATS.
So, as a job seeker, you aren’t just dealing with humans whose emotions can be influenced, you are also at the mercy of automated technology which reads your CV based on set rules and fixed instructions. Previously, we had a recruitment operations specialist reveal trends of errors that recruiters see when reviewing applications. However, there’s a bigger hurdle of the ATS to cross —maybe not so much of a problem if the rules of the system are followed strictly.
In this article, Nzube Umezulike shares what makes a CV ATS compliant and why your CV might be flagged down when scanned on the system.
How to optimize your CV for ATS
So when a lot of people hear ATS, we feel like it’s just this big mysterious thing but ATS is simply Applicant Tracking System, an automated software tool that supports recruiting and hiring experience, it even assists in streamlining the onboarding process but one function that particularly concerns you right now is that it scans your CVs and already has what it looks out for.
For instance, you could update your CV with all the seemingly good stuff —your skills, experiences, certifications, and the likes, but when you miss out on details like your phone number, email address, and LinkedIn URL, ATS would flag it off because it’s been programmed to identify these details as components of a valid CV. This is why I’m always emphasizing LinkedIn because many people —even people in executive roles— feel like it’s not important. It’s a digital version of your CV and many recruiters even prefer to go there to check you out these days.
So the automated testing suits which is what ATS basically is, tracks specific details and keywords that have been programmed on it. From your contact details (phone number and email) and your LinkedIn to assessing your experience and this is where alignment comes in.
Aligning your experience (dates, lines, and accomplishments)
The ATS application is basically a robot, not a human, and if your document isn’t aligned, it’s flagged as an error. Alignment starts from your lines, rows, and fonts to corresponding dates and events. You cannot start an event (a job experience) in March 2022 ending in September 2022 while your new job reads that you started in May 2022. Sometimes, you may get the dates correctly, but because your lines and rows do not align, they distort what you’ve written and ATS reads it wrongly or even having 3 different job titles on one job experience.
Additionally, your experiences have to be written as listings, and make use of bullet points. Your experiences should come with proper dates, your roles, the impacts and results of those impacts you have made, and figures you accrued, all clearly written and easy to read.
Tracking Impacts of your experiences
The ATS calculates how rich your resume is. The content of your CV goes beyond what you’ve done, it should reflect figures to track your success. Even if it’s something as mundane as packing files or cleaning tables, you should write how many tables you cleaned or files you packed and how it impacted the overall goal of the organization.
Soft and Technical Skills
The ATS also checks your skills and how it aligns with the rest of your resume and the role you are applying for. You shouldn’t even miss out on those two details: the soft and hard/technical skills. The ATS also tracks certifications you have and projects that you might have done, but they are not as compulsory as your experiences and skills.
Related Keywords
Finally, there’s the keyword factor that determines how the ATS judges your CV. There are keywords that should appear on your CV based on your field. You can’t be experienced accounting personnel applying for an accounting job but have keywords related to content management. Each role has keywords that relate to what they do, and the ATS is going to track those keywords, and the number of times they appear on the CV, and that would determine if your document is fully optimized for the role or not.
The trick for how ATS works is this: think of a general score and a pass mark; say 100 and a pass mark of 50. Once the ATS starts to scan, every missing or error detail takes away from your points. So, after scanning the entire CV, you might not be lucky enough to reach the pass mark, let alone get an excellent score.
Get professional help on your CV
However, despite the clear rules guiding an ATS-compliant CV, writing one is not a walk in the park. A safer option would be to have your CV written and reviewed by a team of CV writers and recruiters. At CareerBuddy, we have a proven CV writing service that offers a basic, pro, and premium plan, covering CV ATS-compliant writing as well as Linkedin review.
You want to be hired for a desired role? Why not hire a professional to help you craft the perfect CV for that adventure?
(Co-written by Nzube Uwezulike)