#ATS #resumes #recruitment #jobsearch #HR
Are you tired of hearing that Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) don’t filter out resumes before they reach human eyes? Are you frustrated with sending out countless applications only to hear crickets in response? Well, you’re not alone. Many job seekers face the same challenge of having their resumes lost in the vast digital void of ATS.
The Problem at Hand
As someone who has worked in manufacturing and supply chain, I understand the frustration of having a stellar resume and not getting noticed. Despite having impressive credentials, it seems like ATS is playing a game of hide-and-seek with your application, leaving you in the dark about your chances of securing that dream job.
The Solution
But fear not, there are practical solutions to combat this issue and increase your chances of getting your resume in front of human eyes. Here are some tips to help you navigate the murky waters of ATS:
1. Tailor Your Resume
Customize your resume for each job application by including relevant keywords from the job description. This will increase the chances of your resume getting through the ATS filters and landing in the hands of recruiters.
2. Use a Simple Format
Avoid fancy formatting, graphics, and tables in your resume as they can confuse the ATS. Stick to a clean and simple layout with clear headings and bullet points to ensure easy readability for the system.
3. Network and Follow Up
Don’t rely solely on online applications. Network with professionals in your industry and follow up on your applications with a personalized email or phone call. Building relationships can often lead to bypassing the ATS altogether.
4. Seek Professional Help
Consider using a professional resume writing service to optimize your resume for ATS. These experts know the ins and outs of applicant tracking systems and can help you craft a resume that stands out.
Remember, the key to overcoming the challenges posed by ATS is to understand how these systems work and adapt your application strategy accordingly. By implementing these practical solutions, you can increase your chances of getting noticed and landing that coveted job interview.
So, don’t lose hope and keep pushing forward in your job search journey. With the right approach and perseverance, you can navigate the ATS obstacle course and come out victorious on the other side! 🌟🚀
Now, go out there and show ATS who’s boss! 💪👊 #resumehacks #jobsearchtips #careeradvice
From time to time this sub seems to get a wave of HRbros, recruiters, and bootlickers coming to defend their honor. I wouldn’t pay too much attention to them, they are just trying to make it seem like their jobs are actually useful.
I find it funny these recruiters will insist that you don’t get filtered out then say but we do use knockout questions or similar.
You have to remember if these people were smart they would be doing not recruiting🤷♂️
I’ve got one for you to test. My friend is in HR and also has to do the recruiting for a manufacturer. Going to DM you now.
I just reapplied for something I know I am qualified for because I am sure ats filtered me out with my indeed generated resume. I need to edit mine, but first I need to repair my computer so I can fire up InDesign.
“ATS doesn’t filter out resumes before they are seen by human eye balls” is what recruiters and hiring managers are saying who are afraid their job will be taken over by AI, and are bitching about candidates using AI to optimize their resumes and cover letters to get past the ATS filters. Same people who also post sanctimonious self congratulatory bullshit on linkedin.
They don’t 100% automatically trash resumes but they do flag and rank them… which leads to them being trashed without being read.
It’s the same thing essentially at the end of the day.
The recruiters are splitting hairs on it for being told the shit stinks.
Just DM’d you to try it
You’re right, mate, I’ve got 21 years of talent acquisition experience, and we recruiters always add filters in an ATS to save time.
I posted here not long ago about how a company stopped me from even reaching the application because I didn’t have the bachelor’s degree they wanted, even though I have a Juris Doctor in the field they want (law). I have had applications rejected in 4 minutes, and with the quantity of applications, no, they aren’t reviewing them that fast, especially not at 10:00 at night.
The thing is nobody actually knows how the ATS works in today’s cluster fuck job market. I personally don’t know as a candidate after a lot of applications. Workday for example, I made a lot of application using it. Some companies required to fill all the experience etc. sections despite using uploading a resume. Some companies don’t require such things despite having these sections. I have seen a company which use workday but only asked to upload a resume and write your name!(Unbelievable, isn’t it?!). So Workday and probably other similar platforms can be modified depending on the company requirement. Companies can pick the tools they wished to have.
Also, filtering is not always AI. Press CTRL F, type a word you wished to see on a resume andddd you have filtering.
The problem can also be expressed as resume styles. I personally don’t know if there is a specific resume type which ATS like more. Some people say avoid using tables etc. But seriously, how this is possible from code perspective? How ATS read a word on the resume ? What differences a pdf and docx document have? When I ask these questions, a preferred resume type doesn’t make much sense.
As a candidate who made a lot of applications, I have received a lot of automated rejections from jobs I was a thousand percent suitable! I also received interview invitations from applications which I find myself less suitable.
Overall, yes I definitely believe ATS can filter out candidates. But I don’t think every company use it. And they are becoming a lot more common everyday.
I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but I do know that I seemed to get more hits when I would copy/paste the job description onto my resume. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They don’t want to spend time looking at resumes and discerning if someone has relevant experience, they want to setup filters and force candidates to adapt to show them what they want to see.
Thats why they will spend hours on LinkedIn cold emailing and messaging candidates who “have the right experience” instead of looking at their own candidate pool.
It’s maddening how much they’re lying about this. Or maybe they’re not but I doubt it. All I know is that ever since I started using ChatGPT to tailor my resume and to optimize my resume, as well as JobScan to further scan my resume for the ATS, my callback rate has gone up. Not by much, but it’s something. Referrals have helped too.
At least from my experience, using tools to get past the ATS have worked at me getting past the ATS. So why are they telling me oh no it doesn’t filter you out. It does you dummies.
What’s absolutely wild to me is the amount of bullshit they’re putting out there.
I found a LinkedIN article saying the ATS article doesn’t do that written by a recruiter. Then I found a JobScan article that said they do (granted, they’re trying to sell a product, but I also know that once I started using it I got more interviews). But I found articles on Forbes and INC and CNET that all said the same thing that ATSs screen out resumes. I had a comment that had the links but it got booted, so here I am without them, unfortunately.
All I know is from personal experience, once I started AI tools specifically designed to get past the ATS, I started getting more bites. I don’t know why people are pushing the narrative that ATSs don’t filter out candidates when I know from my personal experience that is what happening, and I found sources that back me up.
Recruiters and other similar professionals are pushing a narrative that doesn’t seem to match reality and I really want to know why. Are they scared they’ll be replaced by robots? And why is it so damn hard to find a job, let alone get a dang interview?
Oh well. It’s an AI arms race up in here. They’re using robots to screen me out so I started using robots to screen me in. Yay.
Recruiters on here insisting ATS doesn’t filter applicants like cops insisting ticket quotas don’t exist. Bullshit on all counts.
Before applying for a role I felt I was qualified for, my friend who worked in the org that was hiring (different dept) sent my resume and cover letter over to the hiring manager, who was excited to speak to me and encouraged me to apply.
The HR Director of the company said I fit all the qualifications and encouraged me to apply.
I customized my resume with key words from the JD and submitted my application, went to bed, and woke up to a rejection email.
I work in a highly technical field (biotech, drug development). I’ve been at the same company for a while now.
About 10 years ago, when we first started out and were small, all resume review was done by hand. The hiring manager looked at every single one. As we grew, we got an ATS. It was originally set up with no automatic filtering. Everyone who applied would be automatically put into it, and I’d just have a database of applicants. My team and I would then filter them out ourselves, again by hand, just using the ATS as a place to store & sort the resumes (before it was literally a folder on my hard drive).
As time went on, we kept growing and got “real” HR, and they took over the management of the ATS. My next hiring need came up, so I had a posting put out. Resumes started rolling in…but slower and of lower quality. It had been about a year since I had hired anyone in my group, and I don’t follow that kind of thing unless I’m actively hiring, so I figured maybe the job market had just gotten more competitive. I asked HR to up the posted salary to attract more candidates and they asked why I needed more candidates. HR informed me that more people had applied for this position than for my last 2 hires, by far.
Turns out they had turned on filters that I knew nothing about and had no input on. I asked them to stop filtering my stuff and, after some heated discussion, they did. Suddenly, I had tons of applicants. I got one of my best hires from that pool, and she had been filtered out by HR’s ATS criteria.
So yeah. Not taking that bet.
Having worked on global ats rollouts , it does not filter out anything on its own. It can’t even match fields from a cv to field in the ats.
What you are saying is when a human filters results, puts in a question ( do you have right to work in USA for example) and the answer will move you to rejected.
As for AI taking jobs in recruitment: I wish but most sophisticated systems still need a decision maker.
What all jobseekers must understand is that there are better candidates. Hard pill to swallow I am in the same boat.
Haven’t even mentioned regulation which doesn’t allow algorithmic decisions to be made.
Ats giving talent pools? What are you talking about? The ats is a crap filing cabinet. Has nothing to do with talent pools.
I think this amounts to a big miscommunication. It seems that some HR people don’t think searching is the same as automatic filtering.
I went to college with a recruiter back in 2016 and he explained the process. They do a Boolean search based on keywords in your resume press a button that filters 10-20 resumes. Then they spend 8 seconds skimming the resume before deciding to send it to a client. This was almost 10 years ago so maybe things have changed.
Just wanna offer in my experience as an (albeit newer) agency recruiter–
Our ATS is a glorified CRM. Literally no filters at all. If I put up a job, I am going through every single resume. The only times I can put up filters are if I post directly to LinkedIn (which is rare) and the qualifiers then become “do you have x years of experience with (whatever client is looking for)” and then yes or no. Easy to lie if you want.
A lot of the seasoned folks at my place don’t even put up jobs and just message/call cold or in their network for jobs they receive, so there’s that too. I’m a weenie gen z so I avoid cold calling as much as possible lol.
I can’t speak for all agencies obviously, but smaller ones like mine absolutely do still go through everything. Usually my morning routine. The only thing that piece of junk does is screw up document formatting.
Thank you for standing up to that nonsense. I couldn’t believe my eyes at the logic those HR people are using to justify lying
We don’t have any open roles in manufacturing or supply chain, but I guarantee you we see every single application. Our ATS has absolutely no settings or capabilities to disposition candidates based on keywords. Sure I can sort and filter candidates once they’ve applied. But there’s no auto reject feature that’s declining candidates before I’ve seen their resume.
We use bullhorn, so I can only speak for that. But if you apply for a job who ever posted that job will see your resume. I have some great ones I keep (one contained the line “I jus need some jems”).
I’ve also had people apply and not submit a resume at all, which is a little annoying.
I saw the ATS system when I was working in nonprofits. I remember seeing it rank candidates based on keywords that fit the job description. They did look at all candidate’s resumes. They just spent more time on the ones who had a resume that was in the top percentage and brought them in for interviews. They quickly looked at the ones who weren’t a fit and said no.
My first role working in product was on an ATS. Some very simple conditional logic placed on certain questions with pre-defined answers would tag certain applicants and/or automatically change their status.
The amount of times clients wanted us to configure (or did it themselves) rules that just didn’t make sense against the position description was substantial.
ATS automated filtering can be very powerful, but at the end of the day it’s a tool. A very very dangerous tool in the hands of the inexperienced or foolish.
You’re right. ATS just filters out McK egos.
I recently left a retail job because of shit management and being short staffed and having a high turnover. Online, a local branch of a budget supermarket was advertising a role. Closer and higher pay than my TL role I just left. Bear in mind, I’d been at that last role for 6 years, so I applied. Decent pay, convenient, gives me time to look for something more aligned with my goals
Two days later get a clearly copy/pasted or automated rejection email. The bland sort we’ve all seen.
That location then puts up signs advertising the role, saying to drop the CV off in store, so I do. Already had one interview and am waiting to hear back.
So definitely some automated bullshit going on
Idk those terms, so I’ll just tell my experience. Every boss Ive ever had says Im a good worker; multiple times Ive been offered promotions to come back.
Despite that, it’s hell to even get an interview.
I worked at ATS in their finance department and the whole place was a joke. Accounts with things years outstanding, massive turnover and downsizing. The Finance director randomly vanished one day on “emergency holiday” and then we were told they werent returning.
One of the worst companies Ive ever worked for.
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Edit: I may have misunderstood as ATS is an automotive/garage company in the UK.
All I can tell you is that I’ve seen how the sausage is made at dozens of companies in my 15 years in recruiting, and I’ve never once seen an ATS that screens out candidates before HR sees them. I’ve even had situations where the managers cousins brother in law’s nephew was being considered for a job he had absolutely no qualifications for – told him to apply to the post so I could send to the manager, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t slide right through to me.
If the ATS is doing it, it’s completely fooling the monkeys that use it.
Here’s two videos from a veteran engineer thats been in the field for 30+ years, previously headed an important function in the microsoft azure department and has actively worked in the development of multiple ats development:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDCc1HHKEhw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDCc1HHKEhw)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSuBL2gGAoE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSuBL2gGAoE)
Okay, here is a story of mine: I did my PhD in a very niche CS field. Overall, the field is very small, probably countable with just a couple of hands, and all of us know each other very well from conferences, papers, etc… Although our research has currently not made it into industry yet, some companies are becoming more interested in what we are doing and started hiring people among us for industry research positions.
So, not long ago after I graduated, one of these companies was looking for someone with our expertise for a Research Scientist position… and I thought: Perfect, I will give it a try. I knew it will still be tough since it is a very good company and many people will apply just because of the company itself. However, I still thought I would have pretty good chances based on my experience and scientific contributions to the field. The job posting was of course shared among us in the socials, but I knew that the majority will probably not apply as they had not finished their PhD yet (or are unable to relocate, baby on the way, etc…).
I applied right away on the first day when the job came online. It took me 4h to craft the resume and the cover letter, but at the end of the day, everything was submitted and I also got the notification email that they received my application, that they will review it, and get back to me soon.
I waited for roughly 3 weeks until I directly reached out via email to the manager of the team (the company did not give me a person to contact, but I knew who the manager was). On the same day, I got his response that my application was not forwarded to him from the hiring team, and that the position was just filled with someone else.
It was a rough take for me, and took some time to handle it. To this day, I still do not understand what went wrong… or what I did wrong. It is the only position I applied for so far where I was literally a perfect candidate…
A few weeks later I found out who they hired from us, and I can’t blame them. He is a very clever guy who did excellent work (he was in a similar stage of his career). It just bugs me that I wasn’t even considered… And here I am now, looking for jobs where my skills at least partially overlap. And get one rejection after another one (which is not even a surprise for me regarding that I wasn’t even considered where I was literally someone from a very small group who has the required expertise and experience).
Just wanted to share my story. And now, back to applying 🙂
Question for the recruiters: how often do you do an audit of whatever keyword/ranking/sorting system your ATS uses? In other words, after you’ve sent along the resumes to the hiring manager, do you ever go back through your resume stack manually (taking as much time as needed) and determine if the ATS filters/sorters/rankers are doing their job the way you think they are?
Basically, do you ever do quality control for your process?