Understanding Applicant Tracking Software for your Resumé

During your resumé writing process, you may have encountered the term ATS, which stands for applicant tracking software. Understanding what it is and how it works is vital to tailoring and creating a resumé that gets you noticed. Up to 90% of all applicants for a job are marked by ATS as unqualified for the job they applied for. You do not have to be one of them.

Introduction: What is ATS and how does it work?

ATS (applicant tracking software) is a type of software that many employers today use to screen for potential employees. It is important to note that ATS is only used to screen electronically submitted resumés. To get yourself noticed by prospective employers, you must understand how it does this:

• First, Human Resources receives your resumé.

• The resumé is then examined by a program called a parser, which reads all of the content with no style (i.e. without colours, graphics etc.). It will then split the content up into different categories (e.g., work experience, skills, etc.). The parser is pre-loaded with key words from the job description and will match key words on your resumé to them.

• When the organization begins to seek applicants, they will search their system for matched keywords that were pulled from your resumé. These are keywords that have been matched to the job description and title; the more your resumé has, the higher the likelihood that you will be noticed. The parser will also take into account aspects such as matched years of work experience and skills.

How to Create an ATS-Friendly Resumé - Overview

In order for your resumé to get noticed by ATS, you must understand how to tailor it to the position you’re applying for. Doing so ensures that you are one of the final few that the employer might interview. This can be done in a few ways:

1. Role Matching. This is one of the most basic things you can do to get noticed. Ensuring that you have a role match on your resumé means ensuring that the job title you refer to yourself by matches the one on the job posting. This should be placed at or near the top of the resumé.

2. Value Matching. Value matching means you try to find overlap between your previous responsibilities and qualifications to show what you can bring to the table as a potential employee. Use employer language (i.e., mimic the language used on the job posting) when describing this overlap.

3. Skill Matching. Identify the key competencies from the advertisement and mimic them on your resumé.

Creating a Role Match

When creating a role match, you must match the target job title (i.e., the one on the posting) to the one you place on your resumé. The target job title must be placed at or near the very beginning of your resumé next to your name (e.g., John Smith, Software Engineer). The job title is the first set of keywords that ATS will see when parsing your resumé; matching it ensures you start off strong.

Creating a Value Match

As with the role match, creating a value match means that you tailor your resumé to what the employer is looking for. The responsibilities and qualifications that appear on your resumé should:

• Be relevant to the position you’re applying for, using the job posting for guidance

• Mirror the employer language when describing them

For instance, if the posting listed a “strong ability to code in HTML” as a required skill for the position that overlaps with your skill set, then you should highlight the work that best demonstrates this in your resumé. An example might look like this. Notice the use of keywords pulled from the job posting:

• “Leveraged a strong ability to code with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to redesign the company web page according to the new design direction, leading to an additional 4.7K in revenue in the first quarter."

Creating a Skill Match

Creating an effective skill match means that you must identify your key competencies. Competencies are broad types of skills that employers list on job postings, used in ATS to screen out unqualified candidates. Competencies are not always listed in the same way, As such, they may be listed in the following waysL=L

• Critical competencies (e.g. flexibility)

• Dimensions

• Characteristics

• Keys to success (“A successful candidate will…”)

• Required skills

• Responsibilities

Regardless of how competencies are presented on the job posting, there are five broad categories of competencies that are most used by employers. Understanding what they are and which ones fit you best is key to understanding how to get noticed by ATS:

• Analytic

  • Problem Solving

  • Critical Thinking

  • Decision Making

• Interpersonal

  • Communication (skill in anything that sends a message)

  • Collaboration

  • Leadership and responsibility

• Ability to execute

  • Initiative

  • Self-direction

  • Productivity

• Information Processing

  • Information literacy (ability to synthesize information)

  • Media literacy (ability to analyze, access, evaluate, create media)

  • Digital citizenship

  • Information and communication technology proficiencies

• Capacity for change

  • Creativity and innovation

  • Adaptive learning

  • Learning to learn

  • Flexibility

Conclusion

Understanding ATS and how it works is a useful tool which can help you get noticed and be successful in your job search. By mirroring the employer’s language, using key terms from the job posting and identifying your key competencies, you can be one of the 10% of all applicants who gets that lucky spot at a new job.