ATS - What Does it Even Mean?

Above Top Secret? Angel: The Series? Aquatic Therapy Symposium? Unfortunatlely, it's nothing as fun as those. ATS (for the purposes of this newsletter) stands for Applicant Tracking System and, whether you know it or not, if you've applied for a job in the last few years, it's very likely you've been assessed by an ATS.
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Companies use ATS to organize candidates for hiring and recruitment purposes. The ATS collects, stores, and analyses your application. In many cases, the ATS decides whether a human will ever see your resume.

Of course, you don't want your resume to be discarded before a person even sees it. For that reason, it's important to optimize it for the ATS "robots."

However, when a person does read it, it's important that your resume appeals to them.
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It can be challenging to write a resume that works as well as possible for both scanning software and human eyes, but there are some things you can do to improve your chances of success:

1. Avoid using background colours or images that can make your text difficult to scan.
2. Go chronological - the ATS uses dates to classify and rank your experience. Using a functional resume can make it hard for the ATS to know when, and for how long, you gained certain experience.
3. Avoid boxes and tables - or at least don't put anything important in them. Often ATS won't read graphically separate text.
4. Stick with left to right for your text. ATS read like we do. It may be tempting to use columns, sidebars, etc. but that may result in garbled interpretation of your information.

Feeling overwhelmed? Don't worry - I just completed the Career Professionals of Canada's ATS Resumes course, and I can help you with best practices to create ATS and human-friendly resumes.

Please reach out with any questions!