What happens to your resume after you submit it? Let’s say that you have been searching various job websites and finally find the perfect position to apply for. You attach your resume to an email and then shoot it into cyberspace. What comes next depends on the company’s policy and its size.
A week passes, then two, and you still haven’t heard back from the company you applied with. “You are an ideal fit for the job”, you say to yourself. So why haven’t you been contacted? It’s because an AI has failed to understand your merits.
Where is My Resume Hal?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not just plotting to kill everyone on a space station; it also approves or rejects your resume. AI is widely used in recruitment through ATS (Applicant Tracking System). If you are like most people, you are surprised to find out about the use of Artificial Intelligence in screening resumes. Why? Because they are unaware of what happens to their resumes after they apply for a specific position. They don’t know about the status of their resumes after they have applied or what that process entails. Almost all large companies and over half of mid-sized companies use ATS to sort and prioritize resumes. Let’s take a deeper look to understand.
Okay, Really, Where’s My Resume?
Regardless of the application method, your resume gets stored on the prospective employer’s search-engine-like database management system, known as an ATS ( Applicant Tracking System ). These resumes can be kept for longer periods looked up when the need occurs in the future. According to Flexjobs, your resume can be stored indefinitely.
The Employer Has My Resume, Now What?
When your resume is loaded into an ATS, the software dissects the content, categorizes it, and puts your resume into its database. At this point, most resumes fail to advance because it is not written or formatted in a way that an ATS can read and extricate data. That is why it is vital to have an ATS compatible resume using keywords for which it is searching.
Hiring managers ordinarily access an ATS to seek out potential applicants for an interview. In order to find the right set of applicants, the hiring managers use various parameters for screening like experience; companies worked for, proximity to the business, and skills through identifying keywords. If you don’t have the right combination of any of these things on your resume, then you are unlikely to be contacted for an interview.
To Sum Up
If you want to ensure that your resume makes it past an ATS and gets you interviews, then make sure that your resume has the right keywords and formatting.