Improve Your Odds with the Applicant Tracking System | JobSearchTV.com
I am not a big fan of applying for jobs through applicant tracking systems because they don’t get results as effectively as other techniques do. I also know many of you are still going to apply. These are a few ways to improve your odds of getting an interview.
I’m not a big fan of applying for jobs through applicant tracking systems. But many of you are going to do it anyway. I’m not going to go into my reasons. I’ve covered this in lots of other videos. So this one is designed to talk with you about how to improve your odds of getting a response. How to improve your odds of getting interviews so that you haven’t wasted your time.
The first way is to try and apply within the first 24 hours of the job being posted. The probability is you’re finding it on a website like indeed or monster or LinkedIn. Getting your resume in early prevents you from getting blocked out. Because sometimes they’ll get 2 or 300 responses, and they’re not going to go through all those. They may stop looking after the first 24 hours. So if you can get it in within 12, that’s ideal, but minimally within the first 24 hours.
The next thing, and I’ll just say I learned this from someone I interviewed for my YouTube channel and podcast, make sure you’re using the exact same key words and phrases from the job description, rather than things that might mean the same thing but the system isn’t smart enough to recognize. Sometimes people use … they might create a data dictionary of terms that are synonyms. Most of the time, they don’t. So when the system is trying to figure out whether you’re qualified, it may be looking for the exact same words and phrases from the job description that’s been posted. And without that, you’re gonna get locked out. So make sure to include that the exact same terms, the exact same phrases that you’re reading in the job description. This requires that you tailor your resume to do that.
Number three is keep a log of all the jobs that you’ve applied for in order to prevent yourself from applying for the same job twice. And if you can, even though they may have similar positions at the same firm, try not to send duplicate resumes to one company. Try. Sometimes it makes sense to do it, because there may be different recruiters behind the scenes. But since we’re talking about tailoring your resume, you know, receiving five different versions of the same resume isn’t going to show well on you.
In addition to looking on job boards, like indeed, or monster or LinkedIn, go to the company websites as well to look for jobs, because some organizations know that these jobs that they’re posting out there, they’re gonna get a lot of responses. But there are others that they’re not putting out so readily because they’re not purchasing hundreds of slots to post job ads. So they may reserve the ones for the job boards that they need to get responses for quickly and have others on their website that they also need to get filled. So always check the company website is well.
Once you’ve applied, use LinkedIn to find the recruiter or the TA manager of the firm. Send them a message to let them know that you applied, that you’re interested in the role and to ask them simply whether or not they’ve had a chance to look at the resume. Don’t do this 10 minutes after you submitted it. Do it the next day, and what their thoughts were, this will generally goose them into taking a look at your resume.
Lastly, avoid using graphics, or charts, or visual displays in your resume because they don’t really work well with an applicant tracking system. Use the cover letter and your resume in Word or a PDF so that recruiters can easily access it. And the system can parse the resume into fields within their system. Because they’ve got reporting requirements, they’ve got to track certain things that they do. And thus, it allows you to be more readily observed. Also don’t use frames in the resume. Don’t use embedded headers in the resume. Often those have difficulty being parsed into systems. And once they have difficulty, they’re not going to manually do it. They’re more likely to hit Delete than do something like that.
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ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. His work involves career coaching, as well as executive job search coaching, job coaching, and interview coaching. He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2400 episodes.
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