ATS’ are awful: here’s what you should know
Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are awful.
You’ll need three versions of your resume as you pursue your job search.
As much as AI and machine learning is changing the world, it still mucks up résumé content almost 100% of the time.
It’s older cousin, dumb-tech ATS, isn’t much better and hasn’t been since the dawn of the internet.
If you’ve ever had to re-splice your resume after you submitted it, this article is for you. It’s also for you if you’re a private client of mine. You may have received, or soon will receive (check your Library of Master Documents), the three résumé versions you’ll need to make it through the ATS gauntlet, which include:
Résumé “for humans”
Résumé “for ATS”
Résumé “for text boxes”
Either way, I’ve prepared the below content as a companion to your job search.
Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are awful.
What’s an ATS?
Oracle defines applicant tracking systems as “software for recruiters and employers to track candidates through the recruiting and hiring process.” Job Scan calls the ATS “a human resources software that acts as a database for job applicants.”
On the other side of all that tracking sits you and I.
From the job seekers on the other side of the ATS, we define applicant tracking systems as “the machines companies, recruiters, and other hiring entities use to parse, sort, and spit out our résumés to eventually be reviewed human reader.”
Reaching a human reader has been the purpose of an ATS since the dawn of the internet. Alas, while most technology has since evolved, I can’t say it has become any easier to make it through an ATS.
The article that follows is based on my bias after more than twenty years in this business, drawing on my perspective as a recruiter, a career coach, and a resume writer, and even as a job seeker in the early days.
The problem:
The first, lesser-known problem with an ATS is that nobody seems to know precisely how they work.
Amazingly, in my experience, many of the same recruiting, hiring, and technology development entities that create, use, and recommend ATS systems, don't understand ATS themselves.
I’ve worked privately with countless CHROs, heads of HR, and recruiters; four ATS developers (including one in AI/ML); and one Big 4 consultant who spent 10 years of his career advising Fortune companies which ATS’ they should use for off-shoring, and to a head they said, “So, Jared. How do I get my resume through an applicant tracking system?”
To which I always reply, “If you’re asking that, how can the rest of us know?!”
The solution I present later in this post “strikes an educated center” and works for most of my clients, but it isn’t foolproof. I recently helped a higher ed client enter her materials online and it felt very much like we were spelunking through a mess built by well-intentioned undergrads. Simplistic assumptions and biases were hard-coded into the experience.
The second, slightly more glaring problem with applicant tracking systems is called out by this CNBC article, claiming that “75% of resumes are never read by a human.” The same article asserts that “95% of Fortune 500 companies use an ATS to streamline the recruiting process and keep up with the thousands of applications” they receive weekly.
Keep in mind that every article you read about applicant tracking systems is either written by a company or a brand with a specific agenda (e.g., readers’ eyeballs, ATS sales). Or it’s written based on interviews with people just like me who contribute the best practices we’ve learned from the field, from industry associations, or on our own. Because none of us have a crystal ball into every ATS, our words of experience hold a lot of truth, but again, they’re incomplete.
Why it should matter to you, right now:
There are limited perfect-for-you jobs at any given time.
You’ve got limited time to pursue them.
Do everything you can to make every submission count.
Yes, it feels great to upload a resume (at least in the early days), but how frustrating to realize that a significant segment of your careful submissions aren’t even reaching a human reader?!
“But,” you say, “I’m dutifully spending my time networking! I don’t have to worry about applicant tracking systems!”
Good! Let me applaud you! Loudly! That’s precisely where my private clients should spend 85% to 95% of their active and stealth job search time!
Even networkers aren’t immune to ATS submissions. Indeed, you may encounter a time when the intermediary holder of the next step says, “Great, glad to get your resume! Now, here’s a link, can you upload it for me?” I even had a COO years ago come back (when I experimented for half-a-second with not providing ATS conversion) and the recruiter was asking for an ATS-friendly version.
What you should know:
There’s hope, and there’s a method, but first there’s a bit of detail that you might like to know as you allocate precious time searching for a job.
Clearly, getting your résumé through a company’s ATS is critical, and this entire post is about giving you the best chance at making sure your resume, when submitted through an applicant tracking system, reaches a human being.
Let’s start with a bit more detail around what you’re dealing with. And let’s set the right expectations while we’re at it.
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I’ve always anecdotally heard that there are roughly 100 ATS around the world in any given year. A google result at time of this publishing, however, gave a different figure. Search results said things like this: “Before we introduce you to the 60 prevalent applicant tracking systems (ATSs)” and “Best 91 free applicant tracking systems” (yikes, 91 free? how many paid?!).
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Which means there’s no bullet-proof resume format to be sure your resume is perfectly ingested by every ATS. (If you know otherwise, please point me to the solution. I’m awaiting that splendid day.)
I can attest to this because I occasionally help clients when they first start a job search. Worst case, you upload your resume and it goes into a black hole with a simple, “Thanks for submitting your resume!” Best case, you get a preview page to review and make corrections inside of tiny text boxes.
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At least LinkedIn is abundantly clear about which sections, forms, and fields you can use, but the metrics by which a senior leader will be evaluated aren’t fodder for the entire world. This is a hill I die on every day. A leader’s resume should be closely held and shared for the purposes of specific leadership roles, not broadcast for scrutiny by anyone with an internet connection. I go to considerable length discussing this throughout this website and in my work with private clients.
For my private clients
You’ll get three versions when we finish
Copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy.
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Resumes are a beautiful thing. To me at least. Most of my clients come to that conclusion slowly as we work together. Some never stop seeing it as a necessary evil.
No matter how one looks at their resume, the fact remains: the pretty one your design isn’t the same one you should use (at least not as of this writing) when responding to an online job ad. More on that below under the two “For Marchines” categories.
But this section is about the pretty version. Copy copy copy copy copy.
Use the “for humans” version when sending your resume to, or through, people you know, or to others in your broader network. If a human being will see it first, this is the version you will want to send.
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This version is less pretty than your “for humans” version because it cannot ATS cannot read graphics, lines, colors, page numbers, and similar design choices. In fact, the last time a (Fortune 10) client checked using her company’s ATS system (Taleo), it wouldn’t even read the resume until we removed the lines from it!
Here’s when to use your ATS version:
<b>Use the “for ATS” version of your resume if a website has an "upload here" button, or an similarly named function.</b> Unfortunately, these versions aren’t as beautiful. They should contain zero columns, text boxes, or headers, because of the 100+ ATS systems in the world today, most can’t read past the left border or a column or text boxes, and even fewer can read into a header. Also, the company name, city/state, job title, and dates on each job entry need to be stacked on separate lines. This is how a majority of applicant tracking systems (ATS) parse data (including use of the word "Experience" before your current or most recent job.) Unfortunately, there are roughly 100 ATS developers worldwide and they have yet to agree on a standard. Happily, most of today's applicant tracking systems (ATS) let you review and make corrections before finalizing a submission.
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This is the ugliest version you will ever see; however, it’s an approximate “close” to what a recruiter or hiring manager on the receiving side of your resume will see.
While it looks like you typed it on a manual typewriter in 1984, this design contains a deceptively simply-to-executive feature that will make your resume as palatable as possible if you have to copy-paste the whole thing over into a tiny text box.
Contained in Notepad, it doesn’t (or shouldn’t) have a right margin.
This single feature allows blocks of text to wrap properly within their destination, wherever or whatever that destination will be. With a highly formatted Word document (and you should be using Word or PDFs or your Pages or Google Docs versions, never mind, just stick with Microsoft Word), a simple copy-paste of your resume will turn into a jagged mangle of broken paragraph returns.
So….
The “for text boxes” version is used in the rare case that you need to copy-paste your resume into an online text box. It looks like it was typed in 1985, but if you were to copy-paste the Word or PDF version of your document, the result would be a visual disaster. This text-only (aka, ASCII) version has a variety of important attributes for text-box pasting, including no right margin, which means your content will wrap naturally into the destination box.
Headline:
Copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy copy.
STILL NEED A HOME FOR THIS CONTENT:
It’s time to fall apoplectic because I’m about to dish some inside baseball.
If your resume is ingested and spat out for a human being to read, it will be ugly.
1. Use your "for humans" resume whenever you have a chance. Even if you've previously sent the ATS and/or text-only versions, take a printed version of the "for humans" resume with you when meeting people for meetings and interviews.
• No right margin so it wraps to its destination. Be sure your Notepad (or the equivalent program your computer uses to open the file) has “Word Wrap” checked in the “Format” menu bar.
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If a job ad is posted online and you see, “Upload your resume here,” you can assume it will be parsed by an ATS before it ever reaches a human reader.
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Before starting to apply to a job opening, try to determine which version of your resume will be needed (likely the ATS version, with the ATS version on standby in case you need to repopulate text boxes after the ATS ingests your resume and asks you to verify or finish filling in text boxes.
If you find that the online system asks to upload your resume to the system, odds are high that your resume will be ingested and parsed by an ATS.
The problem is that it might not populate the correct fields.
While AI is getting better, sometimes machines will read company names writing into the body copy of an entry (e.g., vendor companies) will trigger a brand-new entry, assuming that you worked for the vendor company. This is just part of the mess.
MY VERSION-MANAGEMENT SOLUTION:
Create a folder with the name of the opportunity to you can easily reference it later.
Copy and paste your three resumes into your new folder.
If you update your resume, be sure the other versions are also updated.
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