Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs)

What is it?

An Applicant Tracking System or ATS is software used by employers to collect, organize, and screen job applications. It automates hiring by posting jobs to multiple boards, parsing resumes for keywords, and tracking candidates through the recruitment pipeline. Since approximately 71% of all employers currently use an ATS for some part of their hiring process you need to know what they are and how to make your materials work within the system.

When you are applying for a job or internship there are two main ways to determine if an ATS is in use

  1. Check the URL and see if any of the following names are listed:
    •  Workday, Greenhouse, iCIMS Talent Cloud, BambooHR, JazzHR, Lever, Jobvite, Applicantpro, Paylocity, SmartRecruiters, Paycom, PhenomPeople, Breezy, or Bullhorn…..There are of course many more but these are the ones you’ll see most often
  2. If the employer’s systems asks you to upload your resume and then asks you to enter all the information again into boxes on their site

Top things you need to know to get past the gatekeeper

ATSs do not choose or reject resumes – they do however prioritize them for manual review

File format:

You should submit your resume in PDF, however, if you use a PDF too many times it can become corrupted and unreadable by machine. For success, do not change software back and forth (multi-conversion) when building your resume. If you start with one format, stick with that one format

  • ⛔ Word > Google Doc > PDF
  • ⛔ Google Doc > Word > PDF
  • ⛔ Pages > Google Doc > PDF
  • 🟢 Word > PDF
  • 🟢 Google Doc > PDF
  • 🟢 Pages >PDF

Don’t make these formatting mistakes:

  • ⛔ Columns – ATSs cannot and will not read data in columnar formats. Just don’t use them
  • ⛔ Graphic resumes – most folks in policy already know this, but pretty is not your friend and ATSs can’t read them
  • ⛔ Creative naming – ATSs look for the word “experience” to give you length credit for a skill or ability so be sure that all your sections containing achievements contain that word in the header. The only sections on your resume that do not need to contain the word “experience” in the header are:
    • Summary (if used)
    • Education – do not list experiences you had during your education here, just the degrees you earned and when (see resume samples)
    • Skills – do not list “soft” skills here, only computer skills and languages. If an employer can’t give you a test to prove you have a skill and at what level of capability, you need to tell them about it in a bullet point. Saying you know STATA and saying “good communicator” are two very different things
    • You may have multiple Experience sections (e.g., Relevant Experience, Academic Project Experience, Additional Experience, etc.) but don’t make too many; 2-3 are fine
  • ⚠️ Outdated fonts – not as important as other things, but use Calibri, or Arial, not Times or Garamond (this matters more to humans than machines but it’s still worth mentioning)
  • ⚠️ Summary statements
  • ⚠️ Unclear employment history – Make sure that every entry in an Experience section contains: Employer name, location of the job (city/state or country), your title, and the dates (month/year) you were there

Tips:

  1. Do not use templates to build your resume – you should never use them anyway, but especially if it will be read by an ATS. I know they look nice. I know they are “easier” than making it yourself from scratch, but all of them contain hidden formatting that you cannot edit and which becomes more and more corrupted the more you try to edit the document
  2. Be careful of using online resume builders – for a similar reason but also for reasons having to do with back-end coding

How do ATSs read resumes?

They use something called “parsing” which you can learn more by asking your favorite AI! Essentially what you need to know is that you send in your PDF resume

  1. 📃 >>> the ATS converts your resume to a text file (.txt) – which is again why you want to be careful about how often the file format converts
  2. ⚙️ >>> it goes through the parsing algorithm >>> the algorithm pulls out relevant skills, and gives the employer an amount of time that skill has been in use
  3. 👤👤👤 >>>the algorithm makes a list of the “top” candidates mentioning the desired skills

Writing about your experience

  • Bullets should always start with a powerful action verb (please avoid “helped,” “worked with” (used sparingly “collaborated” is a better verb anyway), and other weak verbs that demote your work to being secondary to someone else’s)
  • All bullet points should be in STAR format – the most common thing I correct for during resume reviews is that a student listed the Situation and Tasks performed but left off the Actions taken and most importantly the Result of those actions. The ATS (and the hiring manager) is looking for results! Performed Q using X to do Y resulting in Z
  • Use past tense verbs even in present jobs – the ATS taxonomy does not contain words in the present tense
  • Keywords do not have to be exactly as listed in the job description because when it parses the resume, the ATS also normalizes certain things. Normalizing means it turns a skill into it’s most simple form so that all ways something is written “match” what the employer is looking for (e.g., Excel, MS Excel, and Google Sheets all become “spreadsheets” and you get credit anytime they are mentioned but more credit if they are in your bullet points than just in your Skills section)
  • Write it yourself (AI can help but be careful) – ATSs can detect if all or most of a resume has been built or the text generated by AI and flags suspicious text for the manual recruiter review