Why you're not getting interviews from job applications
Recruiters and the Reality of ATS Systems
Recruiters are sometimes dishonest about resume filtering and ATS systems. You might have been told by a recruiter that resumes and candidates being filtered out by ATS software (Workday, Taleo, Lever, etc.) is a myth. They often pile on to the dishonesty by claiming that every job applicant’s resume is screened by a human.
This is laughably false.
And it takes about 2 minutes via Google search to verify that. Just google any job ATS software, go to their product website, and you’ll see that all the major ones offer some form of “automatic candidate sourcing”.
Automatic candidate sourcing is a fancy term for software or AI that ranks resumes from best fit to least fit for a particular job posting.
A Firsthand Experience with ATS
During my job search, I wasn’t getting any interviews from cold applications. To get a recruiter’s point of view, I posted a dummy job on LinkedIn. It cost me $50 but was well worth it. I posted a Software Engineer role and got about 700 applicants within a few days.
LinkedIn’s job posting platform ranked the candidates from best fit to least fit.
I looked through the top 10% and bottom 10% of candidates according to LinkedIn’s ranking and noticed that there was no correlation of being a good fit apart from matching some keywords that I had in my job posting.
The bottom 10% group had some really impressive software engineers in it. The problem was that all the frameworks, tools, coding languages, cloud services, etc., they had on their resume didn’t align with the keywords I had in my job post.
The Problem with ATS Rankings
As a software engineer, I know that skills translate from one framework to another, so it seemed silly that the LinkedIn algorithm was penalizing candidates that didn’t have specific keywords.
But unfortunately, this is just the world we live in, and we have to deal with it. Every job post will get hundreds or even thousands of applicants, so ATS ranking is sometimes a necessary evil.
The Reality of Cold Applications
So next time you apply to hundreds of jobs via cold applications and wonder why you only got 3 replies, got ghosted by a hundred, and received a rejection email with no other communication, just remember:
- You were competing against hundreds of other candidates.
- If your resume didn’t stand out, it probably wasn’t looked at for more than 10 seconds.
The job market competition is fierce right now, and candidates need to put more work into getting noticed. It’s unfortunate, but it’s the reality that candidates need to accept.
What You Can Do as a Job Seeker
Here’s how you can improve your chances in the job search process:
- Do your due diligence and find jobs where you’re a good fit.
- Craft a resume tailored to each specific job post.
- Go above and beyond by reaching out to a recruiter via email or LinkedIn DM if you know who is behind the job posting.
How ScanResume Can Help
Luckily, ScanResume can help you with the first two points.
The resume scanner feature reads your resume and the job post description you provide. It analyzes whether you’re a good fit for the role based on your current resume and provides:
- A list of missing keywords.
- General resume improvements.
Check it out!