In today’s job market an applicant’s resume isn’t just read by recruiters, it is first screened by artificial intelligence which can sometimes rule out a resume even if that person is adequate for the job. That is why Mesa hosted a virtual event on Friday to better understand these systems and how artificial intelligence can impact the job journey was conducted
With artificial intelligence becoming a huge part of people’s everyday lives the first of two Bypass Applicant Tracking Systems events was held. In this event people were taught how to overcome and understand the AI tracking systems that are part of the job recruiting process and how people can tweak their resumes in order to have a better chance of landing a job.
The meeting started off by introducing these AI systems and what they do. These systems which are called Applicant Tracking Systems, or ATS for short, are embedded softwares that assist companies with the hiring process. They can analyze information, compare resumes to the job posting and determine whether applicants are qualified enough.
After having a better understanding of what the ATS systems do, the facts on how much this has impacted the job market were presented.
It was shown that ATS is responsible for rejecting, on average, 70% of resumes for any given job position. 97% of U.S. large and middle sized companies use ATS in some way and 88% of recruiters felt that qualified candidates were ignored by an ATS because they did not match the exact criteria established by the job description.
Even though these facts sound concerning they are nothing to worry about, because afterwards the ways in which resumes can be tweaked in order to bypass these systems were shown.
Some tips and ways to have a resume approved by these systems and eventually seen by these companies were to avoid templates, tables, charts, underlined words and some fonts like Times New Roman. These things cannot be picked up by ATS systems and therefore will come up as blank.
ATS also looks for specific words that were put in the job description, so if the job is looking for someone who is a hard worker, an applicant’s resume needs to have those exact words. If the job requires a Bachelor’s degree then that exact degree needs to be on a resume.
Another helpful tip that was given was to use the JobScan ATS Resume Checker, an AI website that checks your resume and determines whether it would be passed by the ATS systems or not.
With the world changing so fast it is important to stay ahead of the curve. It is important to know how to adjust and use other methods or websites in order to bypass these AI scanners. It is important to know how to use AI to beat AI.
