Organizations increasingly rely on machines to sort out resumes long before they reach the hands of a human recruiter. Recent data indicates that nearly 99% of Fortune 500 companies and a growing chunk of small and mid-sized businesses now regularly filter resumes through an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) before their HR department gets involved. According to Research and Markets, the global ATS market size is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.7% during the forecast period, to reach USD 3.2 billion by 2026 from USD 2.3 billion in 2021.
This is why it's critical for people to actually understand how ATS works, how it parses through your resume, and how to ace the ATS to get your resume the attention it deserves from human decision-makers who conduct the actual job interviews.
What You Need to Know About Applicant Tracking Systems
What Is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)?
An ATS is a piece of software designed to help enterprises electronically handle the recruiting process. The ATS essentially goes through all the resumes electronically submitted on the company’s database. It acts as the company’s first line of verification in finding suitable resumes to fill the current job vacancies. This first level of verification is based on certain set criteria and parameters to identify the potential best fit candidates. In the case of ATS, this is done through targeted keyword search in all the CVs. If the CVs contain the pre-programmed keywords for that particular job role, the CV is accepted and processed for the next phase of recruitment.
Why Use Applicant Tracking Systems?
Applicant Tracking Systems enable companies to get rid of a lot of cost and confusion involved in paper trails and other traditional forms of talent search. This helps recruiters stay focused instead of spending a lot of their office time just filing and shredding papers or moving and deleting emails in an effort to stay organized. This also helps avoid costly errors such as accidental deletion of important contacts and helps keep the team lean by supercharging the application processing system.
How Does an Applicant Tracking System Work?
An ATS can look for talent suited for your organization's needs in two ways. It can process all incoming resumes in the company’s database and also comb through social media to look for relevant experience and skillsets. The ATS is capable of ‘reading’ resumes thanks to artificial intelligence capabilities. These keywords may also include names of preferred universities, preferred companies for job experience, and necessary skills and experience.
The Role of Social Media in ATS
Many Applicant Tracking Systems are designed to parse through professional profiles of candidates on social networks. They can also parse through social media sites with relevant keywords selected by the employers for the job roles.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The best way to make sure your application passes through the ATS is to treat the resume like an item to land on the first page of SERP, or search engine page results. As any web content creator will tell you, this means that you need to optimize the quality of content on your resume for search engine optimization (SEO). This means paying attention to the list of potential matching keywords relevant to the job role including alternative job titles, related skills, and experience.
Extensive Research
One thing that applicants should always keep in mind is that they should tweak their resume to fit the specific job they are applying for. This could include minor or major edits depending on the roles the applicant wants to target. The way to find potential relevant keywords is to thoroughly research the organization, the specific job role, and the skill sets that may be relevant for it. It is possible to conduct this research through person-to-person networking or online searches. This will give you a hint about the correct direction to follow in order to succeed in the keyword-seeking ATS and help you to optimize keywords.
Another useful tip here is to go through the profiles of the current employees of the company the applicant is aspiring to enter and check their backgrounds and qualifications. This is highly useful if there are profiles available from the same division/ team/ background that the applicant wants to get into and check if these people share similar qualifications and whether or not the applicant could be a good fit in the team.
Avoid Common Errors
If the motive is to pass through the ATS with flying colors, applicants should be as direct and keyword-oriented in their resume content as possible. Applicants tend to play up the soft skills a lot, and this leads to vague, immeasurable qualities such as ‘great team player’, etc. The ATS is geared towards being as efficient as possible and will likely only search for a handful of high-impact, relevant skillsets. For instance, the right educational qualification (name of the degree or the specific area of education) can be high-impact keywords.
About the Author: Scott Young, is the president of PennComp LLC, a Managed IT services Houston company. Being a CPA, Six Sigma Master Blackbelt, Change Management Certified and Myers Briggs Qualified, Scott's expertise is reflected in PennComp as a leading IT company for computer services and network integration. PennComp utilizes Six Sigma methodologies and practices in their service delivery and offers state-of-the-art monitoring and management tools to their clients. Website: https://www.penncomp.com
