Hi, I am a job seeker, highly experienced and qualified in my field with many solid skills, admittedly a little out of touch with the latest developments in recruitment (raise you hand if you are Gen X..)
I recently learned that when applying for a job on- line, 9/10 your CV is scanned by ATS software (Applicants Tracking System), I.e a bot! About 97% of CVs will be rejected before they even get to a human.. that is because sometime something like the format of your CV can confuse the robot and mess up your text, so you are not being noticed and your CV binned despite having the perfect match skills otherwise.
I was totally gutted to learned about ATS as I applied for quite a few jobs by that point which I thought I was the ideal candidate, but within hours got the same generic message that my application was not successful. The one that arrived on a Saturday within 10 min of applying was the last straw.
I thought I was going mad so I tarted to read a bit about that. I was really starting to feel shit about myself and pathetic for not being up to scratch with the latest tech fashion. I so far learned that my lovely and thoughtful CV format screwed my application completely... apparently ATS doesn't like columns in the document, headers and footers and the bullet-point style I chose was not ATS friendly (-).. 🤷🏻♀️
I am absolutely furious about this tool. Sure, I understand why it's being used, but why not tell us what the roles of the game are? How am I supposed to know which style font ATS favour?
I am now determined to completely transform my CV to a bulletproof ATS buster! I think graphically it will look like shit (I work in the design industry for goodness sake!) but it will hopefully reach a person..
My questions:
- If my formatting looks like I didn't care, how would that be appealing to a human, considering I passed the bot?
- What do I need to do to bust the ATS??? For example, formatting my CV to a shopping-list style (which apparently desired) will make it 6 pages long!
Anyone have experience with this and can share their wisdom please? Any tips will be greatly appreciated...perhaps a CV example maybe for sending online?
Sorry for the long message but I am so frustrated right now and really need a job! Thanks for sticking with it.....