I know that pretty resumes look nice, but those only work when you email or physically hand them to someone. Many times a highly designed resume can’t be read by an ATS.
If you’re applying for a job where you need to upload your resume, it gets scanned by an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). If you don’t have the right words, or if the right words are in a unique font, text box or column, the ATS can’t read it. The scanning report that gets shown to the hiring person makes you look like a blank.
If you want to see if your current resume is ATS-friendly, try a free tool like Job Scan and compare their samples with your resume.
There are lots of different ATS programs, some are smarter than others. But if you don’t know which scan they use, it’s best to send it in a plain format. The solution is to create two resumes.
- A pretty one
- An ATS-friendly one. ⠀ ⠀
If you want to learn how to write an ATS-friendly resume, that oozes character, I show you how in the resuMAY workshops.
your article has been very informative, makes a lot of sense why i didn’t get feed back on some of my applications.