Will Your CV Pass the ATS Test?

With the volume of applicants that many employers need to process, it is not surprising that most HR departments have enlisted the help of artificial intelligence. Will your CV will pass the ATS test? If not, it could mean that a human doesn’t see it at all.

Applicant Tracking Software helps to perform an initial scan of all CVs and job applications. It parses the information and then populates the candidate database for future use. It gives a suitability rating for specific jobs, so your CV must be ready to pass the test.

Obviously, the hiring manager at interview will use the same CV (they have the option of printing the original). It is surprising how many reasons there might be for ATS rejection. Ignore the following information at your peril: 

Be careful with your keywords and language. Everyone knows that you need to optimise the keywords in your CV for the ATS algorithm (use the function and industry keywords in the job description). You also need to remember that your CV should be written so that it reads well. Choose traditional section headings such as: Summary, Employment History, Skills and Education. The ATS will be expecting them.

Avoid any fancy formatting. Information in headers and footers might not be captured. Different columns might merge elsewhere. Embedded charts and images will go missing. The ATS scans the information it “sees” into the employer database, but you should make it as straightforward as possible to follow your story. Don’t use any fonts you need to download (however pretty); avoid emojis. It is worth knowing that hyperlinks could “look” strange after the ATS parsing, so don’t link from an important keyword.

Don’t try to cheat the ATS – you will be found out. If you think you can fool increasingly sophisticated recruitment artificial intelligence, think again. Pasting tiny keywords in white, so they are invisible might still mean that they appear on a database version. Also, don’t stuff the CV with keywords – the ATS will have seen hundreds of thousands of CVs before – they know what is normal. Any attempt to fool the ATS will come across as inauthentic and sneaky to any hiring manager – not a good look.

ATS test tips

Spell out abbreviations or industry terms. While you might think that an ATS is an omniscient AI wonder, some of them are pretty basic. It might only pick up on abbreviations for certain terms and vice versa. Make sure you use the abbreviation with the full term in brackets. Only do this once. Writing SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) in a CV might seem strange, but you are just playing the game. Alternatively, write out the full term somewhere else, but ensure it is equally visible.

To be safe, send it as a Word document. While you might be desperate for your CV to look professional, there are enough ways to design it in Word to make your messages suitably prominent. Sending a Doc or Docx file is a foolproof way of ensuring that your career stories don’t jumble up when transferred into a plain text database.

Don’t apply to multiple jobs at the same company. There may be a few jobs that you are interested in within the same company but only apply to one initially. If you apply a couple of times and change your CV accordingly (as you should), you might confuse the ATS into sending the wrong CV information for the wrong job. It will also show every job you are applying for, and you don’t want to seem too desperate.

If you are applying for a dream job with a less-than-textbook CV, thinking hard about how to pass the ATS test could make all the difference. An experienced hiring manager has the experience to read between the lines. An algorithm may not.

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This blog is shared with Job Seeker Duetists.

Written by former recruitment ghostwriter Paul Drury (not AI).