How to Continue to Assessment in Cvs Application

When was the last time you called in at a company and asked at reception for a job application form? Or when was the last time you put a CV or application form in an envelope and went to the Post Office to send it recorded delivery? Exactly. Probably a long time ago. Or, depending on your age, probably never.

Recruitment has moved on since I joined the industry. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. What is inescapable is the need for jobseekers to understand how recruitment people, talent specialists and human resources folk expect to receive applications and how best to present your application. You want to maximise the chance of getting an interview. Welcome to the world of Applicant Tracking Systems (an industry-specific CRM if you like) and talent portals.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs) are software or platforms that allow a recruiting company (the hiring company, a recruitment agency or other party) to capture, add to a database and manage all of a job applicant's activity. In the same way a company will have a database of customers (CRM), an ATS performs a similar function but for jobseekers. Used properly, a hiring firm can email interview invitations, job updates, news of interest to candidates and so on. It should plug you into their HR system when you join. Seamless and frictionless.

When you apply direct to a firm's job posting on their website, there is a good chance your CV will be brought into the ATS and 'parsed'. Certain information on your CV is scanned for, extracted and is used to auto-populate fields in a new candidate file on the ATS.

If the ATS is configured properly, there is unlikely to be any human intervention in adding you to a database of applicants. When you apply for a job through a platform such as a job board (Indeed.com, Monster, Reed, Totaljobs.com, LinkedIn, Xing etc.), your CV will very likely be uploaded and parsed to an ATS.

Why should any of this concern you as a jobseeker? If your CV is in a format that is difficult for an ATS to 'read' (extract data from) to populate candidate fields, you may not get a call for interview. The ATS may not be able to populate fields with information vital to an application. We're looking at an exercise in data migration, basically.

The kind of things that ATS have trouble reading or "understanding" can include:

•         Graphics and photographs
•         Ambiguous words (more than one meaning depending on context)
•         Slang or colloquialisms; abbreviations e.g., EBS for E-Business Suite
•         The use of headers and footers
•         Jobs not in reverse chronological order
•         Incorrect date formats
•         Unusual fonts
•         Non-traditional document formats
•         Odd or inappropriate file names

It's becoming a job in itself to apply for a job! You may have all the skills and experienced required to ace the job, but if your CV isn't in an ATS-friendly format, your application may disappear into the void, never to be seen again.

How to optimize your CV for most ATS platforms? It's simple if you keep to a few guiding principles.

* Use a 'traditional' CV layout without boxes, grids, pictures, photos or graphics. I point people to this one from JobScan;

* Populate your CV with keywords relevant to the role you are applying for. Think of an ATS searching your CV like Google searches for things on the internet.

* Recruiters will use a 'Keyword Search' function on many ATS platforms. Use the full expansion of a keyword, especially if it is job or industry specific. Add abbreviations or acronyms in brackets after e.g., E-Business Suite (EBS), Service Level Agreement (SLA) etc.

* The old trick of adding keywords in white is no more. Most ATS will pop your CV out the other end in one colour. The recruiter or hiring manager will be able to see you've tried to game the system! Everyone loves a trier. No-one likes a cheat.

Always use keywords in context. You can include a keyword-rich CV summary at the top of the page. Here is a basic example to give you an idea –

High-performing Banking Technology Recruitment Consultant and recruitment solutions sales specialist, offering extensive experience in retained search (headhunting), contractor placements, winning Preferred Supplier deals (PSLs),  billing in excess of £35,000 gross profit per month, managing two resourcer assistants and an administrator.

Key words –banking; technology; recruitment; sales; search; headhunting; contractor; placements; billing; profit; managing; resourcer

At its most basic, from a word count of 40, 12 key words in a short statement (more than 25% of the word count). If you invest a little time with words specific to your own skills and industry, it isn't hard to do.

 * Use a proven ATS-friendly font

• Arial
• Calibri
• Cambria
• Garamond
• Georgia
• Helvetica
• Palatino
• Tahoma
• Times New Roman
• Verdana

* Put your work history in reverse chronological order, i.e., most recent job first and then work backwards

* If the ATS asks for a particular file type, then use it. Most often, it will either be PDFs (which are good at keeping your format intact) or .docx format (the format most accurately parsed by ATSs). I prefer the .docx format

* Use standard date formats – DD/MM/YYYY

* From our template CV, keep to job headings, thus:

JOB TITLE / Company Plc, Location here,  (MM/YYYY) - Present

* Check and check again for typos

* Reconcile your CV against any on-line profiles you have. Do they match? E.g., LinkedIn, Xing, Github, Stack Overflow and so on

And finally; if you really want a particular job,invest the time in customising your CV content for that job posting. I can't emphasise this enough. During a recent round of recruitment for our own business, we received CVs for a Talent Resourcing role where CVs had opening statements about how committed someone was to a career in Learning & Development or Human Resources, or Fintech (we recruit for Fintech clients but we're not a Fintech).

Good luck. And I hope I don't see you in the void.

At Identify HR, we are here to help candidates all the way through the recruitment process. For CV writing advice, please contact our friendly team on 0131 524 9623 or email us at theteam@identify-hr.com

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Source: https://www.identify-hr.com/blog/blog/into-the-void-your-job-application-applicant-tracking-systems-cvs