Type three letters into TikTok and watch as influencers from around the world tell you how to beat the ATS, or applicant tracking system.
Well.. sort of.
The thing is, nearly all of them will say they’re going to provide the secret to beating the ATS, and then preface whatever their advice may be by saying “you can’t really beat the ATS.”
That’s not because the system is so incredibly sophisticated that it sees what a candidate is trying to do and flags it. Rather, it’s simply because no matter what, at some point, the candidate is going to have to convince a human being they’re capable of doing the job.
If that isn’t something they can do, no amount of résumé formatting or keyword stuffing is going to help a candidate stand out or get past the phase where a human reviews their qualifications or has a conversation with them.
Where Does the Beat the ATS Narrative Come From?
Why has the “beat the bot” narrative gained so much traction then? Put simply the ATS is seen as the first hurdle a job seeker has to overcome.
With its systematic approach to digesting the information in a résumé, sometimes referred to as résumé parsing, the ATS breaks down the résumé into sections (contact info, job history, education, skills, etc.).
As with any system, there’s then a temptation to believe that the system can be gamed.
“With the latest developments in AI, there is no silver bullet and résumé parsing will ultimately get better over time, but it never hurts to keep it simple so that the software will work in your favor,” says Lisa Barrow, CEO of Kada Recruiting.
Advice for How to Beat The ATS
The idea that you can beat the ATS also stems from two consistent pieces of advice from career coaches and recruiting experts alike.
- Keep the format of your résumé simple and easy to read. Skip all the fancy graphics and don’t bother putting a picture on the resume.
- Customize your resume and cover letter for the role you’re applying for. This includes the use of, not abuse of, key phrases that match the desired skills and attributes the employer is seeking.
Tawny Lott Rodriguez has seen this advice be misunderstood over the last 12 years working in talent acquisition. In her current role as HR Director for a school in Salt Lake City, she’s regularly sees applicants who don’t know what the ATS does.
“People hugely misunderstand how the ATS works,” she said. “While some keyword optimization can help, focusing solely on tricking the ATS often creates generic résumés that lack impact. A strong résumé should be tailored to the specific job description and showcase the applicant’s unique value proposition.”
Trying to trick the system causes problems for candidates and recruiters alike.
In the end, the issue of trying to trick the ATS also points to a bigger issue with people flat out lying on résumés, but few alternatives have surfaced to replace the résumé as the defining document of someone’s career experience.
“From a candidate perspective, there are a lot of challenges no matter how simple we try to make it,” Elena Agaragimova, Talent Acquisition and Development Manager at Horizon Industries, said. “Candidates are trying to trick the system and as a result we’ve interviewed people who look great on paper, but when we get to a technical interview they can’t answer a question. I’m frustrated with résumés in general, but we haven’t figured out a better way to show skills and experience as a society.”
ATS Optimized Résumés
Can you beat the ATS isn’t really a valid question. The better way to think of it is how do candidates create a résumé that speaks to both ATS and human needs?
“Recruiters quickly spot résumés overly optimized for ATS and lacking in substantive, relevant content,” says Alari Aho, founder of productivity and time tracking tool Toggl. “A balanced approach where you clearly match your qualifications and experiences with the job requirements using natural language is the way to go.”
Here are some tips for job seekers in any industry and a standardized view of what to look at for those in hiring positions.
The Targeted Résumé
Job seekers should carefully analyze the job description and tailor their résumé to highlight the specific skills and relevant experiences they’ve had in the past.
Quantify Achievements
Quantifying achievements on a résumé is crucial because it provides greater context for your story and evidence of your capabilities and accomplishments.
By including specific numbers, percentages, or other measurable data, you present a compelling case for your effectiveness and impact in previous roles.
This approach not only adds credibility to your résumé but also helps hiring managers visualize the scale and scope of your contributions.
For example, stating that you “reduced operational costs by 15% through process optimization” gives a hiring manager something specific to ask questions about and understand context around the achievement further.
Proofread Meticulously
A typo-ridden résumé can get flagged by the ATS and end your candidacy prematurely. There’s also no excuse for it.
At a time when there are a ton of tools to help you avoid mistakes, employers are expecting to see a clearly communicated résumé if nothing else. Even minor errors in spelling, grammar, or punctuation can detract from the impression of competence and attention to detail that you want to convey to potential employers.
Keep it Simple
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. Don’t over complicate your résumé as a document.
Ultimately, it’s not the thing that’s going to get you hired. That will come down to your ability to interview, your interpersonal skills and how well you present your experience.
So for the résumé itself, Barrow recommends a few guidelines to follow.
- Make your résumé in document format.
- Use a standard font.
- Avoid an overly complex or long résumé.
- Avoid columns, tables or anything more advanced.
- Make sure your work history is in chronological order.
- List tools, software or languages you have knowledge of explicitly.
- Label each section (Work History, Objectives, Education, Certifications, etc.).
Time Consuming Work For Candidates?
So… how much time should all of this take?
“Applicants should spend enough time to ensure their résumé accurately reflects their experience and skills in relation to the job posting, which usually involves some customization for each application,” says Aho. “This might mean a few hours per application, especially when modifying your résumé to include specific keywords that match the job description. However, the focus should be on quality, not just on keyword quantity.”
If you’re seeking a new job, one way you can ensure that you have the ability to customize your résumé to each role you apply to is by keeping the formatting consistent and simple enough for an ATS to scan easily.
According to Rowena Winkler, an ATS expert at Wanderlust Careers, it can take between 1-3 hours to optimize your résumé for the ATS. This is because she recommends not only reviewing the job description thoroughly, but also looking at comparable job descriptions to get a sense of the industry you’re applying to overall.
“Once you have a sense of the job description, you’ll need to identify the relevant keywords that align with the technical skills and soft skills needed for the position,” Winkler said. “Then, you’ll revise your résumé, incorporating the keywords that you identified, making sure it still reads well and highlights your experiences. Lastly, you’ll do final proofreading and revisions, checking that the formatting is still incorporated throughout the document.”
To cut down on the amount of time this process takes, she also recommends having a master résumé that lists all of your experiences with keywords taken from the various job descriptions you reviewed.
You can then copy and paste the most relevant experience for a specific position to a new document and make a few minor tweaks so that it better fits the role. You could also have more than one résumé that is catered to different industries, again using keywords from across different job descriptions.
Recruiters And The ATS
The ATS has become something of a boogeyman, with applicants believing their résumés are being weeded out and eliminated without ever getting in front of human eyes. In reality, there’s little evidence to show that this is the case.
On the recruitment side, hiring managers don’t always understand how the ATS works or how they can get more out of it. This is particularly inconvenient at a time that many orgs are struggling with the realities of searching for candidates.
“We now have to train hiring managers to look beyond the résumé and look for behavioral patterns that a good candidate should have,” Agaragimova said. “The way we try to tackle it is building relationships and training hiring managers, but I’m sure we miss out on good candidates all the time.”
This is particularly the case in high skilled roles in industries such as tech. What hiring managers want and what is on offer in the candidate pool isn’t often aligned and no amount of magical wordsmithing is going to help the ATS return the unicorns they’re looking for.
“I recruit for very specific technology needs,” Agaragimova said. “So a hiring manager sends what they need and what they’re looking for is a unicorn. We then have to prove to them that this candidate doesn’t exist by providing four weeks of candidates that don’t fit the profile. By the time we’re done, they just hire a horse, which is what we should have been looking for to begin with.”
Part of the struggle with the ATS comes down to price and the resources of businesses that are using them. There are more sophisticated, AI driven tools that can help hiring teams hone in on the person they’re looking for, but there’s just one problem.
“The better ATS systems that are AI driven are very expensive,” Agaragimova said. “Small companies struggle to afford them. The ATS’ that a lot of small companies are using leave a lot to be desired in terms of reporting. That’s going to be the big differentiator for small orgs.”
Back To TikTok And Methods
So where do we land on this? The truth, as is often the case, is somewhere in the middle. It’s possible to make a résumé more ATS friendly, but in the end, it’s still best to have it be optimized for human consumption above all.
Keywords, formats and layouts all play a part, but simplicity, just like honesty, is the best policy. If you’re a job seeker, keeping both at the forefront of your process and thinking will help yield opportunities that you won’t be wildly out of place interviewing for.
And for hiring managers, trusting in your recruitment teams and mastering the technology at hand will help you find the best candidate possible, though maybe not the candidate of your dreams.
About David Rice
I’ve been writing about HR since the first confirmed cases of COVID turned the industry and workplace on its head. I’ve specialized in the areas of HR technology, DEI, employee experience and talent management. Through that work I’ve been able to consult on leadership development, employee resource groups and employee engagement strategies.
Learn more about the author.
This article originally appeared on Peoplemanagingpeople.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org
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9 Ways to Prevent Your Team Work Projects From Feeling Just as Stressful & Awkward As Your High School Ones
Managing a project team isn’t easy—especially when every team member has their own unique strengths, weaknesses, and work styles. As a project manager, you’ll have to navigate through seemingly constant misunderstandings, missed deadlines, and conflicting priorities, all while trying to keep the project on track.
So, how can you effectively manage your project team? In this article, we’ll share nine tips and techniques that will help you do it with ease, all while helping every team member contribute to their fullest potential and reaching your project goals.
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Project team management is the process of organizing, motivating, and assigning tasks to the people and resources that will be working on your specific project.
A project team typically includes roles such as the project manager, team members, stakeholders, and subject matter experts. As a team, their collective goal is typically to deliver a specific deliverable on time, within budget, and to quality standards. Along the way, they are likely to face challenges such as unclear communication, inefficient resource management, scope changes, and more.
As the project manager, you’re responsible for minimizing these challenges by creating a project brief, a RACI chart, and a project plan to make sure the team is clear on what needs to be done, who’s doing what, and when everything is due.
You’ll also need to keep an eye on team workloads, stress levels, and burnout warning signs. A project management dashboard can help do this by displaying task assignments, workload, deadlines, and progress collaboration in an organized manner.
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Every member of your project team will have their own quirks and preferences—lean into these. The tips below can serve as general best practices when managing any kind of team and the personalities you’ll find within them.
1. Use Project Management Software
When managing a project team, it’s helpful to have one place to store all the information your team will need about the project—tasks, project requirements, due dates, assignments, deliverables, project objectives, milestones, etc. That place is usually project management software.
Finding the right project management software or resource management software will make your life as the project manager a lot easier.
The purpose of project managment software is to keep track of who is currently working on what, how much progress they’ve made on their tasks, and what each team member’s workload looks like. It’s more difficult to assess everyone’s capacity without software.
It’s also key for dealing with the workaholics on your team. They’re machines when it comes to getting work completed, but they could probably use a break.
Software can help you see exactly what’s on their plate so you can shift some of their tasks to someone else with more capacity. Giving them the right amount of work will keep them motivated and prevent burnout.
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A psychologically safe environment is one in which your team feels empowered and encouraged to share their feedback, ideas, and thoughts with the rest of the team. Research shows that establishing psychological safety on your team can even reduce project errors by 25%. Further, without it, you could miss out on great ideas because your team members don’t feel comfortable speaking up.
Psychological safety is especially important for the introverts on your team. Introverts thrive in situations where they feel comfortable and safe speaking their minds. They’re already prone to silence—without psychological safety, you might never hear from them.
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- Establish clear expectations around communication and behavior that emphasize respect and openness.
- Build feedback loops into your processes by meeting regularly with team members, soliciting feedback, and then actioning that feedback to ensure everyone feels heard.
- Recognize and reward team members for ideas, feedback, and instances where they go above and beyond what is expected of them.
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A RACI chart outlines who is responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed for each project task. Team members can refer to the chart as they’re working through their tasks to get feedback and input from the appropriate team members.
Project managers can also use it to delegate specific tasks to the team. If you’re using project management software, it’s likely that your tool offers a RACI template.
The control freaks on your team will be well-served by a proper RACI chart. These team members will likely want to be involved with and give feedback on every task in the project.
Mark them as responsible or accountable for tasks or project deliverables that you know they’ll be able to nail, and make it clear where they are only to be informed or consulted—or where they shouldn’t be involved at all.
RACI
- Try to assign one person as “responsible” for each task, rather than multiple people or a group. This limits confusion as to who is actually working on something.
- Avoid making yourself (i.e. the project manager) accountable for everything. This prevents you from becoming a bottleneck in the process.
- Clarify the difference between consulted and informed. People that are informed typically don’t give feedback, but those that are consulted can.
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Good leadership means being decisive and taking ownership for the decisions that you make. This doesn’t mean you need to etch your path in stone, however. Remain flexible and open to new ideas, alternate decisions, or changes brought on by something out of your control.
You’ll get better at this through trial and error as you manage more teams and make more decisions—you’ll develop a gut feel for when to make a decision and when to hold off and wait for more information.
This skill is important for managing the unsung heroes on your team. They are the type of team member to put their heads down and get work done, but they need strong leadership and direction to be effective.
Prioritize their work for them and give them clear instructions, but hear them out when they have a suggestion—they’re always in the weeds, so they’ll have plenty of first-hand info to help you with decision-making.
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This one’s pretty obvious—clear communication is essential for making sure everyone knows what the plan is and what they should be working on. But you’d be surprised by how often managers get this wrong. According to one study, 30% of respondents said they’re frustrated by unclear communication from their bosses.
Effective communication is also critical for the daydreamers working on your project. People that are lost in thought with creative ideas or new approaches are great to have on your team, but they can sometimes miss important information you give them.
Set expectations and train them to hone in on what information they need to do their work well and make use of those daydreams.
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- Be action-oriented and use clear verbs in your instructions. Cut out unnecessary fluff and details and focus on what the next step should be for the reader or listener.
- Keep it consistent with timing, formatting, channels, and even color-coding. Sending a status update in Slack one week vs over email the next will only confuse the team.
- Include the right team members. Get the message out to those that need it without bombarding everyone else’s notifications.
- Use the right tools. According to the definition of project management applications, they feature task management, time tracking, and collaboration capabilities—everything you need.
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Project tracking allows team leaders to monitor each member’s contributions and ensure alignment with project goals. Determine which KPIs you’ll use to determine how much progress the team is making throughout the project life cycle and whether their work is on track to meet project goals and stakeholder expectations.
Loop the team in on metrics—if they don’t know what to work towards, how can you expect project success?
Setting clear metrics is particularly useful for the innovators on your team. They have great ideas and clear plans for implementing those ideas, but they need guardrails. Strike a balance between letting their creativity flourish and making sure their work still delivers on the project needs and expectations.
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- Sprint velocity: Used in Scrum, sprint velocity is a measure of how much work the team is completing in any given sprint (a predetermined amount of time, usually two to four weeks). Velocity should increase as the team gels and gets used to the project.
- Earned value management: This puts a dollar value on the amount of work that’s been done and compares it to how much budget has been used. It provides a more accurate picture of project progress than how much work has been done in a given time.
- Resource utilization rate: This measures how much billable work team members have on their plates and whether it’s feasible. Don’t aim for 100% utilization—people need time for things like meetings, emails, and coffee breaks. Shoot for between 70 and 80%.
thedigitalprojectmanager.com
It’s easy to understand why many project managers skip team building activities—tight deadlines mean there’s often barely enough time for the project work to get done, let alone a fun bonding activity.
But if you can squeeze something in between projects (or even icebreakers into your internal kickoff meetings), it will go a long way to building collaboration and teamwork amongst the team, which will result in higher quality, more successful projects.
Team building activities are where the personality hires on your team can shine. This isn’t a dig—the so-called “personality hire” is typically a strong collaborator and social connector.
Give them a starring team role in whichever activity you choose, and they’ll rally the team and kickstart effective teamwork.
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- Try easy icebreakers for internal meetings, such as sharing fun facts, a favorite trip they’ve taken, or whether they’ve met any celebrities.
- A virtual or in-person scavenger hunt or escape room—this tests teamwork and collaboration.
- A team happy hour—this is a great opportunity for team members to get to know each other (but make sure to be considerate of team members that don’t drink).
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Research shows that micromanagement can have negative effects on both team and project performance. According to one survey, 71% of respondents said that micromanagement interfered with their job performance, and 85% reported their morale was negatively impacted by it.
Long story short—don’t micromanage your team. Let them make decisions about how they want to work. Allow them to own their creative ideas and chime in when there’s a process or deliverable that is hindering the team or the project.
Your job as the project manager is to steer the team in the right direction, rather than dictate exactly how everything should be done.
This is great for the devil’s advocate on your team. Give them enough autonomy to challenge the status quo and your usual process, while still providing enough leadership to make sure they don’t go too far afield.
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Celebrating wins, big and small, is a great way to keep your team motivated and engaged in their work. Find out what each team member prefers when it comes to recognition (i.e. do they like to be publicly recognized? Would they prefer a private message?).
On most project teams, you’ll also likely find a cheerleader who is always hyping up their team members. It’s important for you as the team leader to shout out excellent work, but empower your team to do so as well.
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- Send the team member a card—virtual or handwritten.
- Give them a little reward if you can. This might be a gift card to their favorite coffee shop or taking them out for lunch.
- Create a designated place for shout outs. Set up a designated Slack channel or a whiteboard that anyone can add a shout out to.
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Managing an effective team becomes a lot harder without a centralized place to keep an eye on what the team is working on and what’s coming down the pipeline.
Different types of project management tools give you insight into capacity, workload, and whether someone has too much or too little to do. It’s a lot easier to manage than manually updating an Excel spreadsheet every morning, and team members can use it to communicate about project work and give each other feedback.
It can also make your Gantt charts and Kanban boards visible to everyone on the team, which increases transparency and accountability.
Here are the best project management software tools available on the market right now:
1. monday.com — Best for workflow automation
2. Celoxis — Best for Project Management with BI analytics and dashboards
3. Smartsheet — Best for stakeholder project views
4. Wrike — Best for large projects and scaling organizations
5. ClickUp — Best for task customization
6. Productive — Best for agency project management
7. Jira — Best for cross-team project tracking
8. Hub Planner — Best for resource scheduling
9. Bonsai Agency Software — Best for project, client, and finance management
10. Zoho Projects — Best for integration with Zoho Suite
When choosing a tool, make sure to check for integrations with other software you’re already using (Google Drive, Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc.) so data and information is visible in all your platforms.
About Nuala Turner
I’ve been an editor at The Digital Project Manager, an award-winning publication, for three years. I bring a solid editorial eye to the publication and a passion for building a community of experts in the project management space and helping them tell the stories our audience wants to hear.
This article originally appeared on Thedigitalprojectmanager.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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