ATS friendly resume template – do you need one?
ATS friendly resume template
Do you need one? Is there one that will parse correctly?
You don’t need to worry about having the best format for an ATS system to parse correctly! It doesn’t matter how the ATS ends up formatting your resume – there is always a human reader behind it, and that reader Does Not Care if your resume is correctly parsed into the ATS.
The ATS is simply an organizational system that uses keywords that puts people in order of “closer match” to the best of it’s ability…no matter where that keyword is in your resume. The human reader (such as a recruiter or hirer) matches those keywords to your skills and reads for context (which the ATS doesn’t do.) Then they call you if they think you’re a good fit.
An ATS never declines someone automatically. That’s a button press from an actual person. There’s a woman, Amy Miller on Linkedin, who goes into depth about how they work!
An ATS is basically an auto sorting Excel document with buttons to email candidates and containing folders for files like your non-parsed full resume. This is why companies want people to upload their full resume AND fill it out separately! (Candidates hate it….but now you know why it was a thing in the first place.) Companies have since gone to the candidate loving style of the upload-parse style – but as you’ve seen, it’s not the best at this.
This is not your fault or just an ATS friendly resume template issue. It’s because companies use different ATS systems – there are AT LEAST 20 popular ones!! And they all parse it differently. It’s still the wild west out there when it comes to ATS systems.
Anyway…there ya go. It isn’t your fault, it isn’t your job to fix, and it definitely isn’t the reason you might be struggling to get callbacks and interviews. Make your resume fit as many keywords to the jobs as you can and that’s all you really need, not a specific “ATS friend resume template” that works best, or even a specific style template at all! Templates. Do Not Matter. It’s your skills that do.
The right template doesn't exist.
Your skills and experience matters most. Moreso on skills.
An ATS friendly resume template is like 1% of your resume – the other 99% is all about how you fit the job.
Reach out for help to a career consultant like myself, we help people make their resumes fit whatever job they want, easier and faster. I use a skills-analyzing system that makes all skills transferable to damn near any job you want….and ATS systems love it.
When your skills are clear, with context, recruiters can fit you into jobs easier. The keywords match, the context matches. The context matches, the job matches. Boom, you get a call for an interview! And that’s where your skills can shine even brighter. When you know them so well, you relate your skills to the job more…and your chances of getting the job soar!
You can get the skills analyzing system here: www.ordermycareer.com/nextsteps