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Practical Tips for Job Seekers 3: Getting Past ATS
You've developed a job strategy, drafted a good CV & you are diligently applying for posts. Somehow,you're not getting responses. Even a rejection that acknowledges your application has been read. Chances are,ATS is your issue.
You've developed a job strategy, drafted a good CV & you are diligently applying for posts. Somehow,you're not getting responses. Even a rejection that acknowledges your application has been read. Chances are,ATS is your issue.
1.1st off, what is ATS? ATS stands for Application Tracking System. This is a pre-screening tool used in recruitment, to reduce the need to read all applications received for a job posting. When online applications became popular, so did 'applying just for the heck of it'.
Also, ATS became really popular at the height of 2008 global crisis where, in most American & European countries- A LOT of people where looking for jobs at the same time. It simply was impossible to read EVERY application received. The crisis left-ATS and its convinience stayed.
In SA, the adoption of ATS has been slow. Currently ATS is mostly used in the private sector. If you are looking for work in the public sector, chances are high that a recruiter is going to take more time reading your application. However, this thread is still important to you.
2. How does ATS work?
Every time a job post is advertised,the post has key competences,skills and minimum requirements. The key phrases of these skills,competences and requirements,with the education,job title,certifications and years of experience are tagged as 'KEY WORDS'.
Every time a job post is advertised,the post has key competences,skills and minimum requirements. The key phrases of these skills,competences and requirements,with the education,job title,certifications and years of experience are tagged as 'KEY WORDS'.
The ATS tool or system checks how many of the keywords you have in your CV vs the job posting, and scores you based on that. Soft skills and nice to haves are also taken into consideration,but their weighting is lower than that of the afore mentioned.
With all that considered, ATS then scores your application/CV a percentage points based score. In general, a score above 75% is likely to get your CV to the next stage, which is a human recruiter reading it, but some ATS tools go as far as 80%.
3.But nailing keywords isn't the only thing that will help you.ATS has to be able to read your application first. Most ATS tools are irritatingly antiquated-can't recognise fancy fonts,graphics and can't read tables or tabulated data. This's where your fancy formatting fails you.
So the first step to win against ATS is to have a simple formatted CV, with no fancy fonts. I've shared a few examples below
Frame 1 will definitely not face issues being read with ATS. Frame 2 chances are most ATS tools will fail to pick up everything on the right. Frame 3
Frame 1 will definitely not face issues being read with ATS. Frame 2 chances are most ATS tools will fail to pick up everything on the right. Frame 3
I've seen arguments that 2 and 3 can make it past ATS, truth is I've tested them against Jobscan's ATS tool and it didn't look too great at all. So best to reserve the last 2 for when you hand in your application directly.
4. Now you have a properly formatted resume, time to get the keywords right. There are several don'ts here:
- Dont just throw in keywords where they don't belong so that you have them there.
-Don't copy all keywords and paste them at the bottom then make them invisible.
- Dont just throw in keywords where they don't belong so that you have them there.
-Don't copy all keywords and paste them at the bottom then make them invisible.
Your CV must still make sense with all keywords present. Hence, at the very beginning of this series I said take time customise each application and make it very suitable for each post you apply for.
...thread to be continued later on today
...thread to be continued later on today
