We need an automated system to match keywords to job description! List of resume builder tools A free tool to quickly check it to ATS: https://app.enhancv.com/resume-checker Resume vs CV
Notes from https://www.reddit.com/r/Resume/comments/bg4hmi/i_am_a_professional_resume_writer_and_career/
Key mistakes
You used a fancy graphic design-heavy template
Why: Fancy templates break during submission to Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), ATS essentially scans your document, turns it into a text file, and then scans those words for specific indicators that the employer is looking for. It also spits out a “report” to the employer that includes the resume (in text format) as well as your answers to the other questions. When you use a fancy template with crazy margins and text on the sides it doesn’t translate appropriately in the ATS and what hiring managers see is a bunch of garbage text mushed together. Unless you are 100% a real human is seeing your resume, you should stick with a classic approach. Suggestion: Use a classic word document with no columns or fancy table
Your resume lists your skills and job functions, not your results.
Suggestion: Each of your resume Bullets should be tied directly to a powerful organizational result. “Past Tense Power Adjective + Action = Result”
Suggestion: Make sure you can tie all your bullet points in some meaningful way to: reducing costs, improving revenue, getting tangible positive results.
Suggestion: Create a “waterfall” of success, starting with your most recent job and ebbing off into your oldest jobs (e.g 4 bullets for most recent, 3 bullets, 2 bullets, 1 Bullet). Remove any mention of awards or accomplishments during your college years*
You are overly wordy or use jargon
Why: Chances are the hiring manager has no idea what your jargon means and it may never get to someone who does if you assume the hiring manager is going to take the time to figure it out. Humans have short attention spans and 3+ lines are too many to describe one accomplishment. Suggestion: Cut out Jargon, use general language as much as possible while still conveying impact. Bullet points should never exceed two lines.
Resume vs CV These are sections that every resume should have.
- Career Highlights
- Relevant Experience
- Education
These sections usually aren’t necessary. You can most likely remove them if they’re on your resume.
- Objective or Summary
- References
- Hobbies & Clubs & Interests
- Skills
90% of the advice you read about bullets on resumes is bad. So bad. You do not put job duties down (people kinda get what a janitor or secretary or app programmer is/does). You do not have to put a number down (quantify), and in many occasions, that would make them worse.
How to Build Your Bullets: 1.[Outcome] 2.[job description from ad] 3. by 4.[details]
- Outcome - This is a two or three-word phrase that indicates change. “Improved sales”, “onboarded staff”, “Wrote Declaration of Independance”. The exact words used don’t matter as much as the showing impact. “Increased” or “Decreased” are going to be your stock go-tos, but virtually any action verb can work.
- job description from ad - Somewhere on that job ad there should be a list of duties. One of those should make you say “I did that at ConHugeCo!“. Take that description and literally cut and paste it over. Do the same with other job duties that you have done. You want to keep as much of the ads language as possible. This allows the ATS to parse it better, and helps you focus on what they actually are asking for.
- by - This is quite possibly the most important word in this bullet. You want to expand on that job duty. “Swept floors” isn’t impressive. “Swept the floors faster by using two brooms at once” is.
- details - This is your secret sauce, letting you sneak skills (“programmed with python”), drop names (“clients like Betty White”), tools (“In Photoshop and AutoCAD”), awards (“earning Employee of the Month”), or anything else (see the bonus points section below). Examples
- Increased morale by implementing a beating regimin.
- Beat the high score by playing pinball every Tuesday.
- Saved the galaxy by destroying the Death Star.
- Improved sweeping speed by using two brooms at once.
- Decreased customer complaints by carrying a huge spiked club.
Things to put down as experience:
- Jobs (obviously).
- Long-term volunteer experience. Served soup one day at the homeless shelter? Not very impressive. Maintained the website for the “Friends of the Library” group for two years? Awesome. Served on the board of the Farmer’s Market for a year? Great. Grant writing for a local conservation group for six months, bringing in $10,000 in new funding? Nice. Coached little league for three months? Eh… kind of borderline. Are your coaching skills going to get you a job, or will people just roll their eyes?
- Side gigs/hustles. Even if it’s just a holiday job or weekend gig, those skills can prove useful. Did you drive Uber for a year? Fantastic. Did you make candles for a side business? Excellent. Things that don’t make great experience:
- Short-term volunteer experience or community clubs. The weekend that you spent picking up trash from the side of the road… while noble, it doesn’t represent well on a resume. Your group runs the call center at the local PBS station once a year? Again, not a great accomplishment.
- Projects. You programmed an app that got 10,000 downloads on the Google Store? That’s amazing, but doesn’t make for a great “experience” section. Move this to a Projects section instead.
- Hobbies/competitions. Generally, these do better as awards or Career Highlights. You may have won the Ironman competition, but that doesn’t necessarily show you will be good at any job, besides Ironman. Likewise, you may have been a karateka for six years or a cross-stitcher for years, but the relevance of each is questionable.
- Extracurriculars. They require a lot of work and time on your part, but unless they are directly related to your job, they don’t add much. I find that these make much better bullets for your education anyway.
Recommendations for ATS-friendliness
- Avoid links besides email, LinkedIn, Github, or put them in the last section only. Links can affect parsing.
- Keep to single-line items in bullet lists; some items can be two lines, never more.
- Avoid hyphens in words as they maybe converted to soft hyphen if that appear at the end of a line. Disabled hyphenation to mitigate the issue.
- Don’t use extra characters such as (<, >, -, +, etc); they add little information.
- Keep sentences simple, start with verbs (like in this list).
- Use past tense
- Match your job title with the one you are applying for