Episode 94
How to optimize your resume for the Applicant Tracking System
14 min listen
Episode 78
14 min listen
Listen to the Episode
Episode Summary
Think the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is just a robot rejecting your resume? It’s time to optimize your resume for the applicant tracking system. In this episode, we dive into what ATS really does and how it works behind the scenes. You’ll learn that while ATS does rank resumes, it doesn’t have the final say on who gets the interview—that’s up to humans.
Key tips include using a single-column resume to avoid confusing the system and skipping fancy graphics or charts. Instead, be clear about your skills and how you’ve used them in real life.
Another resume myth busted: your resume doesn’t need to be one page. The key takeaway is to always tailor your resume to the specific job you’re applying for by tweaking bullet points and emphasizing relevant experience. Get practical advice on how to optimize your resume for these systems and stand out to recruiters.
Create your dream career, and life
Free UX Portfolio Workshop on October 17
Get our free UX Career Roadmap to help you navigate your career
Write more effective UX case studies with our UX case study template
Learn about Career Strategy Lab, a career coaching community for UX & Product professionals
Watch
Discussion Questions About The Episode
- We stress the need for ATS-optimized resumes without columns or graphics. How does this change your approach to resume design? What steps will you take to make adjustments?
- Given that applicant tracking systems parse resumes by matching keywords with job descriptions, how will this influence the way you tailor your resume for different applications? Have you noticed any impact from keyword optimization in your job search?
- Do you have any overly creative titles in your resume? How might you rephrase them for better ATS compatibility?
- The episode challenges the one-page resume myth. Have you struggled with this limitation, and how might extending your resume benefit or hinder your job application?
- What strategies can you adopt to tailor your resume efficiently without feeling overwhelmed? How do you balance customization with the time constraints of job searching?
Episode Notes & Links
Episode Transcript
Sarah Doody [00:00:00]: Hey there. I’m Sarah Doody, host of the Career Strategy Podcast. Many professionals are seeking more impact, flexibility, growth, and let’s face it, getting paid what they’re worth. But how do you unlock this in your career? It starts with strategy. I’m taking you behind the scenes of what’s working for my career coaching clients. You’ll hear strategies and actionable, yet sometimes against the grain, advice for how you can be the CEO of your career and stop dreading Mondays. Ready to level up your career? Let’s get after it. Hey, friend.
Sarah Doody [00:00:38]: Welcome back to another episode. Today, we are going to be talking about the truth about applicant tracking systems. I know there is a lot of information, opinions, and I’ll be honest, myths about how the applicant tracking system works. So I want to address a few of those today. So if you are in the middle of a job search or getting ready for a job search, you have some clarity about how this software works and what you can do to increase your visibility to recruiters and hiring managers. Alright. So before we dive in, I wanna answer the question of what is an applicant tracking system or ATS as it is often referred to as an acronym. So applicant tracking system is simply software that companies use to help organize and manage all of the candidates who are applying for jobs at that company.
Sarah Doody [00:01:40]: So examples of applicant tracking system might be Jobvite, Workable, Greenhouse, Breezy, Bamboo, and there are many others and those are the software that companies use to organize their candidates. Companies will go in there, write up the job description, and then as a candidate when you apply for the job you are submitting your resume and or application and it is going into that ATS. And once your information is in the ATS, 1 of the myths out there is that the ATS is robo rejecting people. And that is not totally true. So I wanna dive into that a little bit, but first, let’s go through kind of step by step what happens when you apply for a job. So you apply for the job and then you’re submitting your resume application, maybe other materials. At that point your information is going into the applicant tracking system, where the algorithm inside the applicant tracking system is essentially parsing or reading your resume to then rank and vet candidates to make the life of the recruiters and hiring managers easy so that if the recruiter logs in tomorrow and they’re recruiting for a certain role, the ATS is going to attempt to rank candidates based on which ones it thinks are best suited for the job. Now how does the applicant tracking system actually do that vetting and ranking? It all comes down to the applicant tracking system parsing or reading your resume, and it is trying to look at your resume alongside the job description and determine how well your resume, the literal words on your resume, match what is being looked for according to the job description.
Sarah Doody [00:04:01]: And then after those candidates are vetted and ranked, that is where humans come in, the recruiters and hiring managers, and ultimately decide who gets an interview or who does not get an interview. So I want to be really clear that the applicant tracking system isn’t deciding or have the final say as to who gets an interview or not. Now I will say that when someone sets up a job description in the applicant tracking system, some of the applicant tracking systems allow recruiters and hiring managers to include specific questions and depending on your answer to a question you may automatically be disqualified for the job. So let’s go through some examples of what those questions could be. For example, if the company can legally only hire people in a certain country or even state or province, that might be 1 of the questions. So if the company cannot hire someone outside of the United States and when you answer the question what country are you from and you put Canada, Brazil, Ireland, that would be an example of an instance where you may be automatically rejected because you don’t meet this very specific criteria that the recruiter hiring manager has put in. That is really the only time where you would be automatically rejected by the applicant tracking system before a human potentially looked at your information. Alright.
Sarah Doody [00:05:45]: Now back to this step of the applicant tracking system, parsing or reading or scanning your resume. Now in order for the applicant tracking system to be able to literally read your resume. Your resume must be formatted in a very specific way and this is where a lot of candidates mess up. So to keep this very simple the applicant tracking system does not know where columns start and stop on a resume. So if your resume is 2 columns it’s best to switch it to just not have any columns or have a single column, however you want to phrase that. And the problem is that when your resume is 2 columns, as the applicant tracking system is reading or parsing your resume, the information gets garbled, for lack of better Doody. Meaning that it may start at the beginning of a bullet point, and it reads along the bullet point and is parsing out word by word that information. When it gets to the end of the bullet point at the far edge of the right column, if we’ve got a 2 column resume and, you know, our bullet points are in a left column, when it gets to the end of that left column it doesn’t stop.
Sarah Doody [00:07:17]: It keeps going to the next column where you might have skills, experience, whatever it is because it doesn’t know the difference. And that’s when your bullet point may kinda not start to make sense anymore. Because in the middle of the bullet point, the applicant tracking system read a bunch of skills that were over in that next column. So I know this would be a little bit easier visually, but hopefully, you understand. So this is why we need 2 versions of our resume, a 1 column version and a 2 column version. Now 1 thing to keep in mind is that, yes, the applicant tracking system version of your resume will ultimately be seen by a human because as we already went through, once the applicant tracking system kinda organizes or vets candidates, the recruiters and hiring managers are going through and deciding who to offer interviews to. So that’s why we still have to pay attention to the readability, the usability of an ATS optimized resume. But the big primary difference is that when you optimize your resume for the ATS, it’s 1 column, not 2 columns.
Sarah Doody [00:08:37]: Alright. So 1 thing to think about too is, you know, some people say, well, do all applicant tracking systems work the same? And my stance is it’s gonna be a lot of work for you to go and understand how they all work, so why don’t we just be safe? Why don’t we just kind of look at what we know about applicant tracking systems, how they generally behave, not worry about does every single 1 work this way or not. If we know columns can be a problem for them, let’s not make that mistake. Next, don’t use charts, graphs, etc. For your skills. So sometimes people say I’m a 3 out of 5 at accounting or they have a little kind of bar and it’s filled in up to 3 quarters of the way filled in for a certain software like Figma or whatever it is. And the problem with this is, number 1, the applicant tracking system can’t really read or understand graphics. But secondarily, from the perspective of a recruiter or hiring manager the problem is your ranking of yourself as being 75% competent at the software Figma, like, what does that mean? That is your opinion.
Sarah Doody [00:10:00]: It’s not like there’s a, you know, universal standard of kind of knowledge and ability for that specific software. So instead of using these subjective rankings that you give yourself for skills, etc, a better thing to do is tell us in the bullet points how you use that software. So if you were responsible like, you’re a product designer and you were responsible for creating a design system or something like that. Tell us in that bullet point about the design system, you know, created a design system for whatever company in Figma, which involved UX number of components, x icons, and etc. And kind of explain the scope of that design system. So, no charts, graphs, etc. For skills or frankly anywhere on that applicant tracking system version of your resume. Another thing I would caution you to do when it comes to the little section titles for each part of your resume, like work history or contact or education or whatever it is, don’t get overly creative.
Sarah Doody [00:11:14]: You wanna be really literal for that ATS optimized version of your resume. So for your work experience, just say work experience or work history. Don’t say things like contributions or companies I’ve impacted or something kinda creative. And I know you wanna maybe try and sound different or something, but the applicant tracking system may not be able to identify that work history section on your resume if it’s under a section header of companies I’ve impacted or something like that. Alright. So couple of other tips here. I’ve done entire episodes about this 1. Don’t limit your resume to 1 page.
Sarah Doody [00:11:59]: We will link to it in the show notes. It is a complete myth that your resume can only be 1 page. If you wanna learn more about that, check the show notes for that episode. And Sarah tip here I’ll leave you with is don’t use the same resume for every role. You want to be customizing your resume for every job you apply to. Now that does not mean recreating it from scratch every single time. It could mean that you’re just rewriting certain bullet points, reordering bullet points, maybe even removing bullet points to draw attention to the bullet points that are more relevant to that job you are applying to. So, I hope this was helpful.
Sarah Doody [00:12:43]: I hope you have a new understanding of how an applicant tracking system works and confidence in knowing that there are people on the other side of the applicant tracking system who are deciding whether or not you get interviews, if you make it past, you know, some of those maybe specific questions that might be on the application. Alright, so that’s all for today. I hope you have a great rest of your day. Don’t forget to check the show notes for those other episodes I mentioned, and I will talk to you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to the Career Strategy Podcast. Make sure to follow me, Sarah Doody, on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. If anything in today’s episode resonated with you, I’d love to hear about it. Tag me on social media or send me a DM.
Sarah Doody [00:13:39]: And lastly, if you found this episode helpful, I’d really appreciate it if you could share it with a friend or give us a quick rating on Spotify or review on Apple Podcasts. Catch you later.