Jiu-Jitsu and the Art of Beating ATS Hiring Systems
* Jiu-Jitsu has its roots in the Japanese system of defeating a stronger opponent by using their own strength against them.
Operators of Fourth Generation ATS systems have largely succeeded in convincing employers that job applicants can be accurately and more thoroughly evaluated by using Artificial Intelligence for deep resume and social analysis, all made possible because of the new transparency.
You may be surprised to learn that companies are building massive profiles on you and most of the world population!
In an ideal scenario, the hiring manager can tell ATS exactly the skill set he is looking for, and you will materialize for an interview after ATS has decided “You’re the one!” But what if you are one of the other 99 applicants who were discarded, and what if you actually have the better skills? The hiring manager will never know because he will never interview you, thanks to ATS.
The first step in gaming this system is to understand how it works. Clearly, in the belief that deep public information blended with your resume provides an accurate picture of who you really are, employers want you to show, not tell and the picture they see of you is developed by Artificial Intelligence.
If you are the least bit skeptical about this, consider that the giant credit reporting agencies started this trend and the banks and other financial institutions largely rely on the information at face value as presented by agencies such as TransUnion, Experian or Equifax and based on those reports, lend hundreds of millions of dollars.
Technology and the deep dive.
You probably already know that your resume will be scanned for keywords. You should now add to that all the public information such as Facebook social profiles, old blogs, awards, academic histories, old resumes on LinkedIn and other systems, and even posted-comments you may have made in response to online newspaper articles.
Huge numbers of employers have come to believe these profiles are more accurate in understanding who you are and what you can do than any information taken from an actual conversation with you.
The Artificial Intelligence Approach for Digging Deeper
There are also algorithms that can evaluate your performance, based on your responses in a pre-interview test involving assessments of your technical skills or your cultural fit and how you might likely respond to problems.
A Dramatic Shift.
Without doubt, technology has dramatically changed the hiring process. In today’s recruiting and hiring, human interaction is less than ever before and companies are making judgments without ever having met a single candidate.
News: Skynet was defeated by the human resistance.
Enter the Human.
First of all, ATS is a high-value tool and is here to stay. As a real live human, there are things you can do that take advantage of the playing field AI has created.
Transparency.
By now you should know that profiles exist and where they are compiled from. Start with cleaning up your social profiles. Think about your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and what you would like to feed a potential employer’s ATS system from your About sections. What image do you want to project? This is the first step in taking back control of how you are perceived.
Here are four powerful tools that can take advantage of the drive towards full transparency:
- Share your thoughts on industry trends and other relevant topics. Google indexes LinkedIn posts so you can bet ATS will find your posts. This will influence your image must more than say, cute cat pictures. Be very careful about inflammatory political commentary. Best to avoid politics completely.
- You can start an online blog and post weekly or monthly. You will eventually have a discoverable blog that reflects your thoughts, goals, interests, and what you believe is important. Blogger is free and also indexed by Google, who happens to own blogger.com Think of it as a long term investment in future job offers beyond those currently on the table.
- An online personal website is great for showcasing portfolios, projects, and other interests. The reason not to combine the website content with the blog content is so you can provide a snooping ATS with two signal sources instead of one, further compounding the image you want to project.
- LinkedIn itself is a giant ATS with over 600+ million users. Very few users are really taking advantage of LinkedIn’s free tools. At minimum, your 3 line title and the About section of your profile should sync with your resume. This is a topic unto itself, but rest assured, if your resume makes it to the hiring manager, most of them well have read these items before your interview, and you can bet ALL of the ATS systems will have read them!
Two-Way Mirror
Transparency works in both directions. Develop an initial target list of companies you would like to work for. 20 is a good number to start with, and eventually building your list to 100 is much better.
Put them on a spreadsheet along with their web address. Let’s say you consider this file your master-list and name it “target-employers.”
Next, create a new sub-spreadsheet in the same file for each company within your master spreadsheet and link between that sheet and its representative company in your master-list. This way you can accumulate extensive notes on each company without making your master-list difficult to scan because of clutter.
Your Very Own [home-made] ATS System
Create your own homemade version of ATS by using Google Alerts to automatically send you an email whenever a certain term or keyword shows up in a news release. Set up alerts for your target employers and add relevant results to your spreadsheet.
This is a great way to discover developing employment opportunities and other intelligence that may prove beneficial, positive or negative!
Also, check out your target employers with a free glassdoor.com account and read reviews from other employees and much more.
Treat yourself as the highly valuable asset you really are and develop your own acceptance criteria driven by your own research!
Summary
Control your public profile. Take advantage of the new transparency by taking control of your public profile. Build social media profiles, posts, and web assets such as personal blogs and websites that send your preferred message to the bots of Artificial Intelligence. This is not difficult to do.
Romance the bot. Create your resume to play nice with ATS systems. Fancy graphics, formatting, photos, and unique typesets are bad ideas. No human will ever admire your handiwork if you’re deleted by ATS because it’s software was confused by your document’s coding.
Get LinkedIn Right! Your LinkedIn Profile, About Section and Title should sync with and enhance your resume. Your resume is limited to one page if you have less than five years of experience and are applying in the public or private sector. This is another reason to enhance your LinkedIn Profile, maintain a blog and website, where you can go into depth, provide graphics, images, photos, opinions and all the things that would be ignored on your resume, but highly attractive to ATS and a hiring manager who has actually received your resume.
Resume Style Counts. The resume design strategy is of critical importance. You should fine-tune each resume being submitted to reflect the job requirements and to signal the appropriate keys.
The design and format of your resume determine whether fine-tuning will be a simple task or an error-prone exercise that can make each resume submission time and energy-consuming causing you to feel like you are having to reinvent the wheel over and over!
Glenn Mitch Sitter
Writer of Resumes that Connect!
Executive and Professional Resumes and LinkedIn Profiles
Ask me about writing yours!
[email protected]
https://sslduck.com
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