I know when I started to build my own resume as a fresher. How much of a headache and challenge it was. There were so many questions in my mind. Should I include my score or mention my mini-projects? Which skills exactly should I use as a keyword? and the list went on and on. Right from including the internships and the certifications, I edited my resume more than 5 times only to realise how much a resume can mean in the Job market and I set forth to understand what really happens when it comes to experienced professionals curating their resumes.
The term ATS resume came into the recruitment industry in a very later stage of Internet sourcing. Today ATS optimization and ATS-friendly resumes are the primary requirements for any recruiter out there. Let us understand what ATS is all about. In Layman’s Language, ATS basically is an Application Tracking Software that makes a recruiter’s life easy by sourcing genuine resumes through certain resume keywords depending on the profile requirements.
Myths that are prevailing in the market – Let’s Crash them!
1) An ATS resume has to be very descriptive, and should be at least 3-4 pages as per the experience.
- Be it a 3-year experience or 30 years of experience, a resume should never cross 2 or 2.5 pages. Think of it from the recruiter mindset. They come across thousands of resumes a day and if your resume is more than 2 pages, the recruiter might lose interest and some very important information that can outshine you can be tarnished.
- Always remember! A resume can make or break your first impression. If sharing a simple statement made it look good, then believe me resumes would never be that of a necessary element. You have to make sure that the experience you provide in a particular designation should be crisp, and to the point, and should be quantified and not a mere job description.
Clearing the Myth: Resume Keywords and bullet points should always be based on what you have done and not what the organisation has asked you to do. What results you have created in your tenure is what matters to make it a complete ATS resume and avoiding ATS errors.
2) A resume should always look attractive.
- If only you were applying for a creative post or something that requires your headshot. You can bring it as per your mind. But when it comes to creating a professional resume let alone an ATS resume, the formatting has to be very simple and structured.
- For a proper ATS-optimised resume. There is a structure of the resume, and truth be told it is not at all colourful, eye-catching in nature. If you search ATS-friendly formatting on Google, you will find very simple formats as a sample which only requires proper content, the right set of keywords, and what you as a person can bring to the table.
Clearing the Myth: Your resume should always include your Key Result Areas (KRA’s) and not your Key Performance Indices (KPIs), which simply means quantifying your results and not just putting a plain Job description copy-pasted from Google.
3) Your career objective should be a one-liner.
- Gone was the time when we wrote “I am enthusiastic or an ardent professional I am finding the right organisation”. Today in an ATS resume generation, your career objective is replaced with a professional summary. Imagine you have an extensive experience of 12 years in a domain and you serve nothing but 3 lines as your introduction. It will create nothing but a wrong impression in the mind of the reader.
- A professional summary covers your entire career trajectory as per your experience in your respective domain. You have to make sure that whatever you present in the summary is in the form of bullet points. It covers all the necessary keywords of your domain as per your expertise and KRA’s
Clearing the Myth: You should be concise and clear about how you introduce yourself. Your summary should be filled with the right words instead of heavy vocabulary (because not everyone is Shashi Tharoor out there). “An Ardent professional with 20 years of experience in the IT domain having explored areas like Python, Java, C++, etc” can do the trick instead of “ An enthusiastic expert with two decades of expertise in the IT field, who has dabbled in languages like Python, Java, C++, etc.” (Know the difference yourself).
4) Your soft skills and your expertise are the same and they shall be minimal.
- Imagine someone saying Maggie and ramen are the same. Not only will you puke but you will think twice before deciding what to choose. Your soft skills are something that resonates with what you are as a person and what makes you- YOU! while your expertise or core competencies are something that defines your experience and your professional journey.
- These skills or core competencies are known as Resume Keywords. These keywords stuffed in an appropriate amount can make your resume both ATS-friendly and appropriate. Always make sure that it matches your experience and that you know how to answer them when asked.
Clearing the Myth: Gone is the time when one used to put “Good Communication Skills” in the skills section. Make sure that the domain expertise comes first. Next the soft skills or leadership stack, and then the technical skills which will make a great ATS-friendly resume.
5) your personal details should only include your phone number and email ID
- Be it your educational background, hobbies, certifications, address, date of birth, or even languages known, everything matters. Your resume is your introduction, even if you have 15+ years of experience. These particular points make a brief about your professional persona to a recruiter. Letting him/her know where exactly you are coming from apart from your career timeline.
- The point where you seek a professional introduction to everyone out there, makes a lot of difference and so does your resume including all the details making it ATS-optimised and ATS-friendly. If you “google it”, you will find that ATS-friendly formats include a separate section having all your personal details.
Clearing the Myth: We very well know that the way resumes were present in the 90s and now has a difference in presenting Nokia phones and Smartphones. But then some things in the resume never change. To be very clear, think of a resume with just an email and phone number. It will only raise more questions in a recruiter’s mind and to an extent will end up in a rejection file because it won’t be an ATS resume.
To conclude, avoiding ATS errors to create an ATS-friendly resume requires a proper format that is not bedazzled. The right amount of resume keywords, crisp and to-the-point KRAs, and a professional summary plus a pinch of personal details.
Voila! You will never hear the end of the recruiters calling and asking are you looking for a job?
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