January 26, 2017 | Jolt Ladder

Automation is one of the biggest trends in the world today, and it’s changing your life in many ways, from the process you go through to check out groceries when you shop to the way you order a hamburger. Predictably, it’s had an impact on the way you search for employment too.

You still submit an old-fashioned resume for a position, but what happens to it then is a lot different than it used to be. These days, almost all employers use an automated scanner called the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). It digitally searches through the information on your resume and makes an initial assessment of whether you’re right for the job. As many as 75% of these are rejected by the machine before a human ever sees them.

Problem is, you might be quite qualified for the position, but your resume isn’t optimized to please the ATS. Here are some tips to help your resume get noticed by the robot.

Use a plain format.

Fancy resumes may look nice to us, but those pretty colors and elegant fonts and pictures don’t impress the ATS, and will only confuse it. Stick to a standard and simple format.

Make use of keywords.

The ATS works by looking for words that are associated with the job or the qualifications needed for the position. Look at the original job posting for ideas for keywords, use them exactly as they’re written there, and revise your resume to fit each position you apply for.

Don’t over do it.

If you stuff your resume with too many keywords, it’s likely the ATS will reject it. A good rule of thumb is to keep your keywords at about 3% or less of the whole.

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