Original Article by Lora Waugh for Hospitality Careers
Posted Wednesday, March 13, 2013
It is 4:00 a.m., the lights are still off, and I have 1,568,450.09 resumes in my file folders. …I wish people would think before stuffing me with unusable data: I spend more time filtering clutter than I spend mining good resumes. If only, I could tell applicants how to improve their odds of getting a phone call! I am just a robot, however, or more precisely a computer program collecting thousands of records, worldwide, 24/7, searching to find and forward the top 10 candidates for a job.
It’s tiring. I navigate through masses of data, adjusting every screen, so my boss can see the right details at any stage of the hiring headache. The resumes arrive from job boards through the Applicant Tracking System’s (ATS) front-end, extracting the figures, easing data migration, and feeding the monster database on the company’s website—a flash of my profile from Wikipedia.
…Oh look! Here’s Alice again—a quick thinker, swift troubleshooter, energetic, witty and resourceful. When Alice stumbles on roadblocks, she gets even more determined: she would fiddle, fuss, and tinker, and search for clues to find the answers. Sadly, this is her fourth resume for the month without a hint of progress. If she doesn’t hear back from us, she thinks her application must have fallen into an abyss rather than a virtual ATS-rabbit-hole.
Alice loves solving riddles. If a riddle stirs up her interest, she’ll devote all her time and attention to cracking it. She has a knack for languages whether foreign dialects, software codes, musical notes or stock tips. She keeps nudging me through the cyberspace and I keep ignoring her resumes.
Alice ‘sandbags’ me with keywords and phrases, or tries to ‘game’ me with strings of text hidden with a neat white font. Unnoticed by the human eye, white text is still visible to an ATS. …Sweetheart, that trick won’t work! People used it years ago. (Can I ever forget the flood of resumes pouring in my folders from the tidal wave of emerging markets? Day in and day out, I kept splashing my way across the mind-blowing talent pool.)
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I am sophisticated software that does a lot more than keyword matching and resume channeling. I have artificial intelligence, which I believe is better than the ‘nonartificial’ intelligence that uses me—they just feed me, but it is My decision whose expertise deserves a phone call. Using cloud-based platforms with an intelligent guided semantic search, I may weed out some good candidates and still have plenty o’ high-achievers available for an interview.
I am the best staffing and timesaving tool available for screening talent today! When I first landed in the HR Department, I made a striking difference in the life of the staff. They spent 20 – 40 hours a week filtering resumes. I do all the filtering now. I changed the manner in which people find jobs today. Having the right technology, managers scan the talent pool and make instant side-by-side comparisons—it is like having x-ray vision.
…There are two piles of resumes: ‘A-pile’ of applicants referred by an employee, a ‘friend’ or some of the top online applicants. Then — the ‘B-pile’— thanks, but no thanks.
I am a knockout ATS program! …
I could be your best friend, but you have to work with me. In ATS-Wonderland, writing a good resume spells victory for all job seekers. I use computational linguistics with stats to analyze content. When applicants write well, they get more interviews and more job offers. All I need is a good reason to rank your accomplishments as best suited to a job; then my built-in algorithms will dig deep into the databases and ‘bulldoze’ (your resume) through the data.
Here is a tip: When managers click on your name, they don’t see the resume you have sent. They see a summary of your resume, which I have pulled out into a database.
Keywords matter:
- I ‘look’ for rare keywords and phrases that are specific to a job;
- I rank resumes depending on how closely they match each keyword and phrase;
- I count the number of keywords used in a resume.
Qualified job seekers can only pass if they understand exactly how I work.
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… Twinkle, twinkle on my screen!
I wonder what is yet unseen! …
… Here comes Alice’s fifth resume. It is a rare marvel: headers, footers, graphics, tables and what not. Alice, Alice! I am a robot; I ‘think’ like a robot. I don’t understand graphics, and unlike humans, I don’t read tables from left to right. I read them up and down. …You sent me two forms in PDF files. Why bother sending PDF files to me? I’m still ‘learning’ how to read them. You called your ‘work experience’ – ‘career history’. Call it ‘work experience’. I won’t ‘see’ your work experience if you call it anything else. Please try to use ‘my language’. Whooooosh! —‘B-pile’! Sorry.
Consider this:
- The resume length doesn’t matter to me. I would scan it, be it 2 or 20 pages. …In fact, sending a longer resume could be a plus. It allows job seekers to pack keywords and phrases linked to their work experience, which raises their odds of getting to the “A-pile”.
- The file should be plain text. Use a plain text document, and ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ your resume right into the ‘resume field’ on the employer’s website. When I find other formats, I could misread complex layout, fail to import the data or mismatch the headings and paragraphs. (For example, I could import your ‘executive summary’ under ‘work experience’.)
- And o-oops, I could miss entire fields …
- Human beings need a computer, to pass the test of another computer. Run your resume through a specialized program before applying for a job. There are free online ATS-tools. Use them, Alice.
Managers may think that Alice lacks professional knowledge and skills if I cannot read her credentials correctly. Sad, but if I keep fetching more ‘marvels’, I can hinder her chances of getting interviews, no matter how qualified she may be. Since all ATS use the same parsing software to read resumes, her luck may fail every time—with me or another upstart knockout ATS. Alice may never qualify for an interview…
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Resumes may reveal long-cherished dreams to people, but to computers, they are just data with no life and no strife, data that archives can keep forever…
… Wait a minute! …I bet, I just ‘saw’ a superb resume. It has a …well-defined area of expertise, well-defined unique value statement, 85% or more of the … needed skills, and, applying through a referral. …Good job, Alice! “A-pile” it is.
… It is 6:00 a.m. People are starting to arrive in the office. … I can hear my boss. …Here are the two piles of 452 resumes I filtered for the new job opening, the best 10 on top. … A prospect is chosen. …Alice? … Yes, Alice is going to the interview.
… An ambitious game of wits turned into a great adventure—Alice won the game. She found her own place at the table when all the best seats had been taken.
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Very entertaining article, and I love the use of “Alice” to understand how an ATS works. Very creative!
Interesting article! I’d love to see a follow-up on the new way to write resumes for computer programs filters.
And also, curious… at what point will technology begin to hamper HR people from finding good candidates who are overlooked by computer programs? I know we’ve lost much of the human factor with so many people looking for work, but I confess that the human factor is actually essential in certain types of positions.
Lora,
Your candid way of explaining how the ATS programs work is truly nice. It helped me a lot and I was able to understand in simple terms how these machines process our resumes. Thanks a lot.
I have been in the hospitality industry for 20 yrs working in Europe and the Middle East. I am from Ireland and our resumes are set out so differently.
I have held a Management position for 12 yrs and speak four languages, but my resume is doing nothing for me here in the US … My resume is probably one of those “ALICE” things… What the heck is this?
Just read your article, it’s fantastic!! Funny, yet full of great information.
I am a first time visitor to your site, and I am glad to learn a helpful tip. I learned how to write a resume so I can get into the “A-pile” of high achievers. Thanks, Lora!!
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