How to get the scanners to like your resume

The demonstrations of Avature and Taleo amazed me. But it also made me curious about how a recruiter could possibly handle all of the information that they would receive from prospective candidates. Talk about information overload. I thought it would be interesting to find out more about the selection process when using these recruiting tools. I found an article in Fortune Magazine about Taleo recruiting for its own open VP of Product Marketing. The Chief Marketing Officer said they normally would get about 50 resumes for this type of position, but in this economy the received 250 resumes. But while the applicant pool quadrupled, the time he spent on reviewing candidates did not because he used Taleo’s own .candidate-screening program to narrow the candidate pool. He was able to quickly narrow down the applicant pool to a manageable 20 candidates. How? The automated resume scanning process that picks out key words to determine if the candidate’s resume is a good match to the posted position.

This ease in screening resumes is theoretically great for busy managers who do not want to wade through 250 resumes, many of whom probably shouldn’t be considered. Many companies are using this type of candidate selection software. According to the article, Taleo has 3,900 customers, including 48 of the Fortune 100 companies. Every quarter, 10 million new candidates apply to companies such as Starbucks, IBM and JPMorgan through Taleo software.

In order to have your resume be competitive these days, you have to understand how these systems work so that you can make sure that your resume is scan-worthy. Your enthusiasm and years of experience may not help you if your resume doesn't get picked by scanning software.

These systems function by the software parsing and scanning each submitted resume and breaking out the applicant's levels of experience. This information is summarized some for the hiring manager, who can also filter and define criteria. If an applicant’s resume meets all the criteria, s/he goes to the top of the list as a qualified candidate. Hiring managers set the candidate requirements - years of experience, level of education, location, etc. - and also can determine how many of these parameters the applicant must match.

The fact that an applicant can apply on line makes it tempting to assume that you can create a single resume and send it out en masse (what the article terms “spray and pray”). But, this is not an effective strategy because you need to tailor your resume to meet the specific parameters of the job postings. Otherwise the scanner will pass your resume right by. To be effective in this process, you must research each position you are interested in, and carefully read the position description posted online. Then, you need to figure out how to add the key phrases into your resume to directly reflect what the business is looking for in a candidate.

Here are some tips from the article:

If you just don't have a skill listed on the posting, you should not embellish but you can add the keyword in creative ways. If, for example, the job calls for someone with knowledge of SAS, a way to get around it is to say "SAS familiarity," "currently studying SAS," or even "SAS interest." You might not have the skill, but at least it puts you one step closer to having your resume read.

Along with reflecting the skills and experience listed in the job posting, you should use words that are industry specific. For human resources candidates, for example, terms like "leadership development," "talent management," and "succession planning" are key. Passé terms like personnel should be left out. Some professional resume writers suggest having a section at the top of your resume where you list core competencies or areas of knowledge. It's a good place to repeat some of the requirements in the job description. But make sure you're able to back it up with something in the body of the resume that speaks to those core competencies.

Most importantly, the article states that the resume needs to make sense to both the software and a human reader. It doesn't do you any good to get flagged by the software only to have a hiring manager think your resume looks like gibberish because you've overloaded it with key words."

Source: Beth Kowitt, Fortune Magazine, April 2009