Its not you Why no ones reading your resume

Its not you Why no ones reading your resumeIts not you Why no ones reading your resumeBy now, youve rewritten your resume more times than you can count. Youve labored over every word and formatted it within an inch of its life. Blogs with titles like Jumpstart your Job Search with 5 Resume Tips and 4 Foolproof Ways to Get a Recruiters Attention dominate your bookmarks. Youve shown it to your friends, your mom, a few trusted colleagues, and that HR manager you dated a while back. Everyone agrees you look great on paper.So Why Dont They Call?One likely answer is that your resume at least the resume as you know it rarely makes it to a menschlich reader. The problem starts with that shiny Upload A Resume button. It looks promising, but dont be deceived this button is the doorway into a void, a purgatory of waiting, wondering, and never hearing back. This abyss has a name, and its ATS.After you upload your resume (and spend the rest of the day staring into your empty inbox), an Applican t Tracking System immediately disassembles your masterpiece and presents you to a prospective employer as just one row in a list of applicants sorted by keywords and job titles. Users then cruise the assembled applicants, searching for candidates worth a further look.If it sounds a lot like online dating, thats because it is. These systems present recruiters and hiring managers with assumed matches, usually based on predetermined criteria like the presence of certain keywords on the resume. Some systems even screen out applicants automatically before a human end-user is ever involved.Before the problem solver in you grudgingly admits that this sounds like a solid workflow management system, read on.The Future is Here. And it Doesnt Quite Work.Most major companies use an ATS of some sort. But despite their pervasiveness, Applicant Tracking Systems are maddeningly ineffective at doing what theyre designed to do pairing employers with the right candidates. Theyre so ineffective that th e Wall Street Journal recently devoted not one but two pieces to the problem of getting the right resumes into recruiters greifhands.WSJs Lauren Weber notes that even though jobseekers and recruiters alike find the systems frustrating, companies are expected to spend $5.75 billion on online recruitment tools and services in 2012. This is great news for job boards, but the truth is that the technology is still very young and still very flawed. While some services try to mitigate the ATS black hole by using detailed profile systems rather than simple resume parsing, the end result is ultimately the same resumes are disassembled and sorted into searchable pieces. Recruiters and hiring managers must still comb through lists of criteria before deciding to view an individual applicants details.Four Tips for Getting Noticed in an ATSNow that you know whats on the other side of the looking glass, you can start to do something about it. While there are countless Applicant Tracking Systems av ailable, some key criteria remains constant. Start hereHave a Second Resume. You can keep your brilliantly formatted resume for email attachments and personal networking, but keep a simple.txt file on hand for online applications.Dress It Down. That.txt file needs to be as simple as possible. If your resume contains advanced formatting components like boxes, borders, tables, or images, pull them out. Text only.Name Your Sections. While your real resume might not contain section headings, your ATS-ready version should. Dont be creative here. Use common headings like Experience, Professional Experience, and Education. ATS systems look for these headings and break your resume down accordingly.Understand Search. Populate your resume with keywords that fit each job posting. Dont just dump a keyword section into your existing resume do the work and make the keywords integrate seamlessly with your skills and experience. The desired skills listed in the job posting are good indicators of w hat keywords the recruiter or hiring manager will be searching for.So how can foolproof your resume to make it to the top of a recruiters list? The answer is that you cant. Like so many other components of the job search, the needs of the organization and the opinions of the reader will control much of your resumes success or failure.However, the steps above are a fine start toward getting your resume noticed in almost all ATS systems. Do your research and put in the work before you hit Submit. Next time, the void may answer back.