Why your resume gets filtered before a human ever reads it

Your resume can be turned away by software before a person ever sees it. The reasons are mostly mechanical, which is good news: a few plain fixes make sure yours gets read.

Software reads it first

In Harvard Business School's research on hiring, roughly two-thirds of the employers surveyed in the US, UK and Germany (63 percent) used a recruitment management system, the software that sorts and scores applicants. More than 90 percent of those employers relied on it to make a first cut or rank middle-skills (94 percent) and high-skills (92 percent) applicants (Ref: Harvard Business School, Working Knowledge).

The same research is blunt about what that costs capable people. Among the job seekers the researchers studied who kept being passed over, only one in five made the first cut, but not for a lack of effort.

Why good candidates get filtered out

These systems look for candidates who match the posting closely. The researchers describe the people they reject this way: there may be gaps on their resumes or their years of experience may not precisely match the position they seek.

So the fix is usually in the resume itself: what you have done, in the words the employer used, laid out so the software can read it.

Five things to fix before your next application

1. Use the posting's own words. If the job asks for "accounts payable" and you wrote "AP", the software may not connect the two. MIT's career office warns: avoid abbreviating relevant keywords as an ATS may not properly consider it as it rates your resume (Ref: MIT Career Advising and Professional Development). Write the full term, and where you have done what the posting describes, say so in its language.

2. Keep everything out of tables and text boxes. The same guidance is direct: avoid placing information into tables or text boxes. Put everything in the main body of the page, one column, top to bottom.

3. Drop the graphics. Skill bars, icons and logos can look good to a person. MIT's advice is to avoid use of graphics, icons, or images.

4. Use headings people recognise. Experience, Education, Skills. Plain headings make it obvious where each section starts, for the software and for the person who reads it next.

5. Account for a gap in one line. A short, honest line on what you were doing (study, caregiving, a move) will not change how every system is set up, but it gives the person who reads your resume an answer instead of a question.

See how the software reads yours, free

Aya's free resume check shows you how an applicant tracking system reads your resume and gives it an ATS score from 0 to 100. There is no signup to see your result. Paste it in, look at the score and what to change, and fix it before the next application goes out.

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Sources

• Harvard Business School, Working Knowledge: How to Tap the Talent Automated HR Platforms Miss
• MIT Career Advising and Professional Development: Make your resume ATS-friendly