The Applicant Tracking System, or “ATS,” has driven my clients absolutely NUTS for years now.
This system, originally designed as a database to house applicant profiles & statuses in the hiring process, has morphed into a full-scale automation effort to reduce stress on recruiters and drastically reduce time spent with potentially valuable candidates.
Please don’t fall prey to it’s influence. I’ll teach you how.
What is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)?
Imagine yourself as a warehouse recruiter for a Fortune 500 company. Your single most important function is to keep warehouse shifts staffed with employees to ensure quotas are met and profits soar.
Meanwhile, the annual turnover for your employees is somewhere around 43%.
That means, a 100-person workforce requires 43 new hires per year just to keep up with a standard turnover rate.
The applicant tracking system is designed to speed up the hiring process by:
- Accumulating new applications for easy access
- Tracking & ranking candidates from the initial phone screen to the final offer
- Onboarding & training employees after accepting the position
Since the original function of ATS was so comprehensive, most don’t realize that the ATS uses filtering & automated ranking to remove nearly 75% of ALL resumes before they’re even read by a human.
This is a HUGE problem in the world, because too many qualified candidates are immediately dismissed while their subpar counterparts are invited into the new position with open arms.
In another lifetime, I would have considered these recruiters lazy for their lack of effort to interview every candidate.
But while I’m still not a fan of ATS, I’ve learned to empathize with large company recruiters’ need to reduce an ocean of prospects to a single pool of “probably good” candidates.
So, if you want the job, don’t drown in the ocean.
Which Companies Use Applicant Tracking Systems?
Not every company will use an applicant tracking system. ATS are the province of large companies with several (often similar) roles to fill.
An ATS is most likely used by companies who:
- Boast a workforce of over 500 employees
- Hire roles with higher turnover (i.e. fast food, reception, childcare)
- Employ limited HR staff dedicated to recruitment
Any company with over 500 employees could see dozens of applications to even a single position. Companies with over 10,000 could see hundreds.
The applicant tracking system helps to narrow those hundreds of employees down to an “elite” 50 or so, who can easily be screened by a 3rd party recruiting team. The candidates are then whittled down to around 10 before sent along to a hiring manager.
The same is true within positions of high turnover. For instance, our aforementioned warehouse with the 43% annual turnover.
43 employees per year equates to a new hire nearly once a week. That means, you constantly need to be accepting, screening, and interviewing applicants to meet your ever-evolving workforce.
ATS have saved many a recruiter’s job since COVID-19!
But the worst offense of all is the company with an understaffed HR team.
A single HR employee can only handle so much from the recruiting side and, even with the help of our lovely ATS, can only interview so many people in a day.
I’ve heard horror stories of a company recruiter working alone to staff over 10 jobs simultaneously. Can you imagine the ATS filtering that takes place in that scenario?
Maybe 2-3 candidates out of 50 for each role? Think they might’ve missed something in that process???
No hate on the recruiter, but the company itself should re-think its values if it’s de-prioritizing recruitment.
If you’re applying to a workplace that meets any of these criteria, update your resume immediately! You’re going up against a mass of candidates all trying to stand out in an algorithmic vetting process.
How Does Automated Resume Screening Work?
Automated resume screening software uses algorithm-based code reading to identify the most relevant resumes to a job description.
While this sounds a bit scary, let me start by saying that MANY applicant tracking systems do not include this function.
This type of ATS is designed to read keywords & intent (similar to a Google or Bing search), so the software can be much pricier.
However, nearly every ATS includes a filtering function (things like “past job title,” “years in the industry,” etc.) to create a shortlist of “qualified” candidates, so either way you’re on the algorithmic hot seat until your first interview.
The other concern for candidates is that, like its idol, Google, popular ATS are getting smarter and moving toward fully automated resume screening.
This creates a problem if you’d be an EXCELLENT employee at a company but have a resume that’s not ATS-optimized.
How to Bypass Automated Screening
There’s a lot of information out there about “beating the ATS,” and most of it’s complete nonsense.
The one thing that most people seem to agree on, however, is that keywords are a core component of successful ATS optimization.
To give an example of what this looks like, you might see that a certain role calls for someone who communicates well in a Sales position.
Your resume’s first bullet would then be adjusted to include something like, “Led all project communication through Slack channels & Asana task management software to reduce project completion time by 15% YoY.”
The keyword, “communication,” appears early and within the first bullet to signify your alignment to their value of the soft skill, “communication.”
Similarly, when applying to a new job titled, “Director of IT,” you might adjust your job title from “Technical Lead” to “IT Lead.”
You would use the term “IT” to describe yourself because it matches the job description and it’s still an accurate description of your position.
Language matching is used because, unlike keywords, a simple term is adjusted to match the job description in order to create a subliminal connection between your way of communicating and that of the recruiter (and the company as a whole).
This is a somewhat complex method I’ll use to enhance a stellar resume to go from top 10% of candidates to top 5%.
Finally, I’ll often include keyword variants in my keyword set.
This is a truly elite method of keyword targeting that involves inclusion of synonyms, word forms, and other keyword variants to show holistic competency in a certain field.
For instance, an applicant to the position of “Restaurant Manager” might include the keyword “Restaurant Manager,” but may include the following keyword variants as well:
- Restaurant Management
- Bar Manager
- Bar & Restaurants
- Food & Beverage
These words, while not directly defined by the job description, serve to encompass a clear understanding of the position as a whole.
They also may be captured as keywords across multiple job descriptions, depending on the listed job title & associated requirements.
Beating the ATS isn’t easy, and it can be really tricky to do alone. But get yourself an ATS-optimized resume humming along for every application and you’ll hold the key to unlocking a whirlwind of interviews!
Resources:
https://www.ramseysolutions.com/career-advice/how-to-beat-applicant-tracking-systems
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/high-turnover-jobs
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/resumes-cover-letters/automated-screening-resume
https://www.resumepilots.com/blogs/career-advice/ats-keyword-optimization-tips
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/28/resume-how-yours-can-beat-the-applicant-tracking-system.html
