Wondering why your resume never gets short-listed?
We might have the answer to that. According to a study, 70% of the resumes are not seen by the recruiters. Now the question arises, how do companies select that 30% resumes? The answer is ATS.
ATS is an applicant tracking system that acts as an electronic gatekeeper for employers and hiring managers. Your resume gets scanned by the ATS to extract keywords which then gets matched with the job description. Some ATS also give your resume a rank that recruiters use to filter out the candidates. If ATS cannot parse your resume or gives it a low score then your application is bound to get rejected.
Nowadays, it's said 75% of large MNCs rely on ATS to filter out candidates. And for that reason, your resume must be ATS friendly.
A resume is supposed to give a gist about you and excite the reader to know more about you. For example, a resume is like a teaser of a movie. Just like if a teaser excites you, then you will watch the movie. So having a good resume makes all the difference.
For landing an interview, the first step is to get your resume noticed and the majority of the people make a mistake in crafting their resume which leads to resume rejection even if they are a good fit for the role.
Hopefully, after reading this blog post, you people won't be making those mistakes with your resume. Let's start with the tips.
Some tricks to improve the resumes to make it ATS friendly.
Tailor your resume as per the job description
"One size doesn't fit all" and similarly one resume won't work for different job applications. So, customize your resume according to the profile you are applying to. For e.g. if applying to a back-end role then highlight your back-end skills more compared to the rest or else applying for a data science position then don't forget to put your data science projects on the top.
Use keywords that are mentioned in the job description (Only if you know about it)
When your resume is being parsed by the ATS, it will try to find keywords that match the job description and then accordingly rate your resume. So make sure that you use all the important keywords.
Avoid using tables and columns
Many times, people use tables to represent their education or projects which aren't ATS friendly and should be avoided.
Try to keep the length of your resume to 1 page.
According to some studies, resume length doesn't matter to ATS but ideally, it's recommended to have a 1-page resume since the recruiter is hardly going to skim through your resume in 10-20 secs. He/She might not even turn to the second page.
Always share a pdf version of your resume with the recruiter.
I have come across so many candidates who have shared the word or google doc version of their resume and when I try to open that resume many a time the layout gets messed up and I can't read the resume properly. So to be on the safer side, ALWAYS share a pdf version of your resume.
Avoid any spelling and grammar mistakes. Double-check your resume.
This is such a simple tip yet many candidates forget to check their resumes for any spelling mistakes. Whenever you make changes to your resume, make sure you run all the spellings and sentences through tools like Grammarly or at least get it checked by your friend for spelling mistakes. Having such silly mistakes leaves a bad impression and you should avoid it.
Some sites to help you improve your resume as per ATS,