Memory
You know you’re crazy busy when, not one, but two British career sites (one of which offered to pay me!) send you content to post on your blog and you can’t even take the time to compose a short introductory paragraph to accompany said posts. The good news is that I survived a busy eight weeks of work and school, specifically six papers, six quizzes, three homework assignments, two final exams, and a whole slew of reading – not to mention weekly and sometimes bi-weekly career events on the campus where I work (in between serving an average of 50 students per week), several new clients, and a job club catering to transitioning job seekers. I also barely observed to major Jewish holidays and missed two friends’ 30th birthdays, a baby shower, a wedding shower, and a lot of social gatherings. Needless to say, I am happy to have my life back and happy to be writing to you! Thanks to those of you who kept me in your memory during my hiatus.
Now on to the post…Position Ignition, a U.K.-based career-coaching firm graciously provided the following entry related to resumes and getting yours noticed by an employer’s Applicant Tracking System (ATS). I think you will find that the advice is not all that different from what you might hear on this side of the pond. Speaking of sides of the pond, I am excited that the founders of Position Ignition offered to meet me when I’m in London next month. Career coaches uniting across the globe – how cool!
Post by Nisa Chitakasem of Position Ignition
The way that hiring companies and recruiters are storing, evaluating and shortlisting new graduates’ resumes is already drastically different than to when I was a new graduate. Before, a recruitment agent or an employer’s in-house HR professional would go through a whole pile of resumes that had been submitted to them for just one graduate position. As you can imagine, the individual sorting through these documents only had time to quickly scan each submission for the type of keywords they were looking for. The keywords they were looking for were those words and phrases that indicated a particular candidate was right for the position.
Manually skim-reading each application was never going to be the most scientific or sophisticated way of identifying these all-important keywords, so it’s little wonder that recruiters and employers have embraced new I.T. technology with open arms in order to digitize the process. Nowadays, anyone in the business of hiring and with sufficient resources uses a computerized Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to rank resumes in terms of how pertinent they are to the position they were submitted for. Whilst this is good news for the employer, it’s potentially bad news for you, the graduate job seeker, if you don’t know how to tailor your resume to get you the highest ranking possible. Help is at hand though, with these tips on ensuring your resume impresses any ATS.
- Start your resume with a concise summary that’s rich with keywords pertaining to the job you’re applying to.
- Follow up the summary with short, bulleted points detailing your qualifications and accomplishments, again including keywords that match up with the advertised position.
- If you’re not sure exactly what keywords are relevant to the role on offer, look at the job specification and candidate criteria and identify the words that seem the most integral to the text.
- Be warned that the most advanced ATS technology will take into account the context in which the keywords are used, not merely the actual keywords themselves. Surround keywords with content that actually describes your relevant experience and expertise.
- Don’t misspell words. Misspellings are bad, not because the ATS will pick up on them, but because it won’t. If you misspell a keyword, the ATS won’t notice that word and the word won’t contribute to your resume’s ranking.
- Similarly, it’s wise to avoid using abbreviations, because the ATS may not recognize them. For example, when talking about your degree, type out ‘honors’ instead of using the abbreviation ‘hons.’
- An ATS can also be confused by complicated formatting, so keep the format of your resume as clean and clear as possible.
- Including logos or, in fact, any kind of graphic on the resume is a big no-no for the same reason.
- How you send your resume is almost as important as what you put on it. Before your resume even gets stored on a company’s ATS, it still has to get pass the organization’s email security screening. Attachments may automatically be marked as suspicious so copy and paste the contents of your resume into the body of the email message instead of setting it as an attachment.
- Because of belligerent spam filters, it’s also important to watch what characters and letter-strings you include in the email. Do not, for example, include any exclamation marks or potentially spammy words/letter-strings in either the text of the resume or the rest of the email. For example, if you went to high school in Penistone, England it’s perhaps better to just say that you went to high school near Barnsley in England.
- If you have the option of uploading your resume directly to the company ATS through the employer’s website instead of emailing it, do so.
- Submitting your resume via the website may require you to fill in additional fields as part of the online submission. Fill these fields in even if they are optional. Recruiters often use these optional fields to initially filter out a percentage of the original applications. Make sure you survive this first cut by putting the relevant information into all the fields.
- As the resumes may get sorted out according to these optional fields before they are even opened and read, it’s worth including relevant information in the fields even if you’ve already put it in the actual body of the resume.
So what do you do once you’ve emailed or uploaded your resume to an ATS? Of course, it’s a case of playing the waiting game to some extent but don’t forget to keep an eye on your spam folders when you’re waiting for that email reply to come through. Often, an ATS will automatically generate an email reply to your submission and such an automated email may well end up being recognized by your email filter as spam, even if it’s legit. If you check your spam folder and find that there is indeed an email marked as coming from the organization but you’re not sure if it really has or if it’s a phishing scam, it’s always best to check before opening it. Call up the company to see if its ATS would have started automating replies by now.
Once you receive the email reply, attentively follow any instructions it gives you. If the company wants you to contact it to take your application further, contact the company using the method it has indicated and within the time frame it gives. You will not only be guaranteed a response by doing so; you’ll be guaranteed the fastest possible response.
By following these best practices from start to finish, you have the best chance of negotiating a recruiter’s or employer’s email screening system, spam filters and ATS with optimal success. With the ATS in particular, it’s important for first time job seekers to know that there really is no mystery to it. It’s as simple as giving the ATS what it wants and pushing its buttons—and if you’re applying for jobs you’re actually suited to, pushing all the right buttons is not that difficult at all.
About the author:
Nisa Chitakasem, created Position Ignition to help support professionals through their career challenges. She has co-authored a range of ebooks to help people through various career challenges including: How to Get the Job You Want, How to Ace the Interview, 125 Twitter Job Search Tips, 125 LinkedIn Job Search Tips and 135 Networking Career Tips.
You can also find more career articles from Nisa on their Job Search and Career Advice Blog.
I Think I’m Gonna Like it Here – II
I had my last Strategic HR class this week and I was legitimately sad about it. Weeks of raising my hand and having something intelligent come out have come to an end now that quant classes are about to return. My friend E is probably saying “nerd alert” if she’s reading this right now. Plus, I earned a 98% on a paper I wrote about Cultural Intelligence (or lack thereof) in reference to an article highlighting the cultural incongruence of American-owned businesses operating in Israel. It was nice to feel smart while it lasted!
Getting an ego boost wasn’t the only good thing that came out of class this week (although it did feel really good to get that paper back – just saying). We talked about the importance of culture and the four major types. During our break my professor and I spoke about how sad it is that entry-level employees often give culture and overall fit with an organization little consideration when evaluating potential job opportunities. This is incredibly unfortunate given that those of us who have held a full time job would likely cite a cultural mismatch as the number one reason for job dissatisfaction (or a close second behind a lousy boss).
Here’s a quick (finals week, folks) overview of the four types. Where does your organization/department fit in?
We talked about several types of organizations that closely epitomized each culture type within the context of the Competing Values Framework. It's worth noting that most organizations are a hybrid of two or more, but knowing the differences can still be helpful. Check out this nifty color-coded image courtesy of the University of Michigan.
Clan (Collaborate): Southwest Airlines and Zappos (now Amazon - see their video embedded in this post)
Hierarchy (Control): Auto companies, utility companies, and the military
Adhocracy (Create): Netflix (they don’t track vacation days – where can I pick up an application?) and Apple
Market (Compete): GE and most professional services firms
Do you remember my entry from a few weeks ago on the changing nature of HR? Well David Ulrich (who created the HR model) got together with K.S. Cameron and R. E. Quinn (who used the Competing Values Framework) to combine the two models into something resembling this handy chart. The pieces all started to come together after I commented to my neighbor that Adhocracy is the ideal culture for my personality. When I looked up at this slide (after I eventually stopped running my mouth), it all became clear – I live for change. What’s your ideal culture? Does your current employer offer it, even in hybrid form?
Resources: Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture by K.S. Cameron and R. E Quinn .San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, http://competingvalues.com/
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes
Those of you who read my most recent blog entry may recall my describing one of my current MBA courses as if it were a breath of fresh air compared to my highly analytical previous courses. I always knew that my approach to business differed from that of my classmates, but it was officially confirmed at two evening social events this week. Several other students in my coaching class commented on how it seemed like complete fluff and one in particular asked if we were going to sing “Kumbaya” at the end of the module.
Seriously?? In my opinion, we spend far too little time developing our soft-skills, and in the end isn’t that what differentiates us on the spectrum of success? Will you remember your best boss as someone who developed impressive pro forma statements or rather as someone who catered to your individual needs?
At the risk of being ostracized at the next MBA event (for liking another class devoid of spreadsheets), I am going to write about what we learned in the other class I am taking this module, Strategic Human Resources. I’ll be honest…my perception of HR was pretty abysmal throughout most of my career. I know you’re thinking to yourself, “um, wait, didn’t you work in HR when you were a recruiter?” Okay, technically I did, but when someone would inquire about my position “You work in HR right?” – or worse yet, personnel – yikes! I’d reply with “Well, Recruiting actually”. I was hesitant to associate myself with the HR department in my former organization.
According to our professor, who has a long history of turning around “old school” thinking HR departments, the reality of HR as a profession is changing. It’s moving away from being the catch all for an organization’s mediocre performers and dumping ground for executives’ relatives (with no skill set) who need a job. HR professionals are intentionally pursuing the field as a career path and are getting credentialed – just like CPAs (well, not exactly – I wouldn’t want our accountant to be my HR rep).
Unfortunately HR is not changing as fast as the rest of us would like. In fact, the majority of the students in my class claimed that they enrolled in Strategic HR to find out what the HR professionals in their organizations actually do! For those of us who tried to avoid HR like the plague, have faith and check out this model we covered from David Ulrich’s chapter in Human Resource Champions entitled, “The Changing Nature of Human Resources” and channel your inner David Bowie. Change is coming, my friends.
According to the model, HR professionals should be equipped to focus on all four areas, but primarily acting as a strategic business partner, i.e. aligning HR initiatives with core business strategy. In the old model, HR was the place to hide away from the business and get caught up in policy and paperwork. Okay, that still happens sometimes, but it isn’t supposed to. HR professionals also need to focus on supporting and sometimes leading organizational change efforts - the key word being support, as in not acting as a roadblock to change, but rather as a change agent. According to Ulrich, serving as an administrative expert means, “ferreting out unnecessary costs, improving efficiency, and constantly finding new ways to do things better. “ Finally, the main activities for an employee champion include listening, responding, and finding ways to provide employees with the resources that meet their changing demands.”
So the next time you start to view your HR contact as a less than stellar performer, give him or her the “Ulrich Test”. At the very least you’ll have a framework to use when evaluating or articulating your frustrations!