If you have never experienced sending/delivering a resume and then NEVER HEARING from the company again, congratulations - you haven't needed to send resumes yet.
While understandable, after all it is very difficult for a company to have staff with enough time to respond to every resume that is sent out (you may have seen jobs with thousands of applications out there), this experience leaves a bad feeling.
Has my resume been opened? If so, by whom?
If you are part of the group that has (or hasn't) received an email saying "we appreciate the application, we'll be in touch..." and then not been selected for an interview, this thought has already crossed your mind.
"Did anyone even look at my resume?", "Did they pay attention or just bat their eyes?", "Did I not have the necessary qualifications? Who did?".
Although it is difficult to answer all these questions, we can answer this one for you: In many cases the ones who read the resumes and pre-screen them are ATS - Applicant Tracking Systems.
Sara Conceição is doing an English for Business immersion this week (Thursday at 5pm) with the theme: ATS.
And for you to understand more about the subject and participate with us, we will answer some questions from the immersion here in this article.
1. Please introduce yourself.
Does this question deserve to be in the article? Of course! Think about the last time you needed to present yourself on a resume or in an interview. Tough, isn't it? And not only is it hard enough to talk about yourself, how do I get a robot interested enough to say to HR, "Look, this one you need to read"?
4. What are the benefits of using an ATS?
This is where ATS comes in. These little bots, designed to help the HR team spend less time and resources - and also so that you can get that potential interview invitation email faster - use artificial intelligence to read and compare your resume with the job requirements, and then they decide which ones are worth someone spending time reading or not.
You can agree that this kind of technology is amazing, can't you? Imagine a system doing all the job screening for you! But are these systems reliable?
6. Are there any downsides related do the use of ATS? Which one(s)?
Yes, systems are reliable most of the time. But like anything else they have their limitations, which can hinder both the applicant and the recruiter.
The main things to watch out for with ATS is that they have analysis parameters that can reject your resume even if you are the ideal candidate for the job. This is because these programs read the text of the resume and compare it to the requirements of the job.
This means that if any part of it cannot be read, or if the formatting makes it difficult to read, the system will probably reject your resume from the process. Another very important point is the use of keywords. They are essential for the ATS to understand that you have something to do with what the position requires.
7. What strategies can we use to stand out from other candidates in online processes?
Simply formatted resumes, without images and well described with keywords related to the job should do well with ATS.
Focus on this template when sending a resume online, especially on employment and professional platforms like LinkedIn.
If you want to know more about how ATS work, how best to make/update your resume and even why it's so hard to talk about yourself, there's an amazing video from the Answer In Progress channel about it:
shall we discuss this?
Now that we have given you the basis on the subject, how about putting this knowledge into practice, along with your English?
Schedule a Business English immersion with Sara by clicking here.