A Guide To The Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

What is ATS?

ATS stands for Applicant Tracking System and is an automated recruiting process for companies. Some examples include Oracle Taleo Cloud, Bullhorn, Greenhouse and Workable.

Key Highlights of ATS

1. Scans resume for important keywords & qualifications that they use as benchmarks

2. ATS uses these 'benchmarks' to select the best-suited applicants for the job

3. Resumes are then passed on to hiring personnel to be reviewed

When is ATS used and Why is it Important?

Typically used by larger companies, as these companies tend to receive a huge number of applicants for a job posting. It has been discovered that over 90% of Fortune 500 companies utilise ATS in their hiring process. ATS helps companies to do the 'first cut', significantly reducing the number of resumes the HR department has to go through.

Currently, almost 75% of resumes in the market are NOT optimised for ATS.

What does this mean?

If a resume does not get through ATS, it will never be seen by a real person.

It is important to ensure your resume is ATS optimised in order to stand a chance of securing the job.

How do we optimise resumes for ATS?

ATS typically uses these 4 main categories to sort through resumes:

1. Education

2. Contact Information

3. Skills

4. Work Experience

Hence, it is critical to ensure that the resume is formatted in a way such that the system recognises each category distinctly.

Basic Checklist for ATS organization:

• Include acronyms of titles/certifications whenever possible (eg. National University of Singapore, NUS)

• Have a title that informs the ATS about the target position/industry

• Keep all information within the document body of the resume (nothing in the header or footer)

Want to further optimise your resume?

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About CareerSocius

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