You find a job that seems like a great fit.
You have the right experience, the required qualifications, and a background that closely matches the posting.
You apply.
Then, sometimes surprisingly quickly, you receive a rejection.
It is easy to assume that a recruiter or hiring manager reviewed your resume and decided not to move forward. But today, technology may play a role before your resume ever reaches the person making the hiring decision.
Applicant Tracking Systems, commonly called ATS platforms, have been used by employers for years to collect and organize applications. More advanced recruiting tools may also help identify qualifications, compare applicants with job requirements, recommend candidates, or assist with screening.
Not every employer uses these systems the same way, and not every ATS automatically rejects candidates. But there is one thing job seekers should understand:
Your resume may need to make sense to technology before it ever reaches a human.
What Does an ATS Actually Do?
At its most basic level, an ATS helps employers manage applications. If a company receives hundreds of applications for a single position, the system can organize resumes, track candidates, and allow recruiters to search for specific experience or qualifications.
Some systems may also rank or compare resumes based on how closely the information in them aligns with a position. Resume Optimizer Pro provides an overview of how ATS systems can parse and rank resume information.
This is where candidates can run into problems.
A hiring manager familiar with your profession may quickly understand how your experience relates to an opening, even if your resume does not use the exact terminology found in the job posting. Software may not always make those connections as easily.
For example, an experienced Cardiac Sonographer may have extensive adult echocardiography experience and hold proper credentials, but their resume simply lists their title as Sonographer and barely mentions the procedures they perform. The candidate has the experience, but the resume simply is not communicating it clearly.
The goal is not to stuff your resume with keywords. It is to make sure the experience you genuinely have is easy to identify.
Your Resume’s Formatting Matters Too
A resume can look great to a person and still be difficult for software to interpret. Many resume templates use multiple columns, graphics, icons, charts, and text boxes. While visually appealing, complicated formatting can sometimes make it harder for hiring systems to correctly identify information such as your employer, job title, certifications, or dates of employment.
A strong resume does not have to be boring, but it does need to be clear. The best resume should work for both audiences: the technology processing it and the person eventually reading it.
AI Hiring Tools Are Also Under Increased Scrutiny
Automated hiring technology is receiving growing attention from researchers, regulators, and the courts.
Stanford researchers examining large-scale hiring data found disparities in how some groups of applicants were recommended for certain jobs, raising questions about how automated hiring systems can affect different groups of candidates. Stanford provides a more accessible overview of those findings in its article, “AI Hiring Tools Can Yield Racial Bias and Systemic Rejection.”
At the same time, ongoing federal litigation involving a major HR technology provider has raised questions about whether AI-powered screening tools can contribute to discriminatory hiring outcomes. HR Brew has covered the case and the larger questions it raises about AI-powered recruiting technology.
Those allegations are still being litigated and should not be treated as a final finding against the technology involved. However, the larger conversation is important. As employers use more technology during recruiting, candidates increasingly want to understand not only who reviews their application, but also what technology may influence that process.
Can You “Beat” an ATS?
Probably not in the way social media makes it sound.
There is no universal ATS score, magic keyword percentage, or secret resume format guaranteed to produce an interview. Employers use different systems and configure them differently.
Instead of trying to beat the technology, the better goal is to make your qualifications easy to understand.
Your resume should clearly show:
You should never change your experience to match a job posting. But you can change how clearly you communicate the experience you already have.
Where a Professional Resume Service Can Help
Most professionals were trained to do their jobs.
They were not necessarily trained to market that experience on a resume, and writing about yourself can be surprisingly difficult.
You know what you do every day, which means certain skills and accomplishments may seem obvious to you. To a recruiter, hiring manager, or screening system seeing your resume for the first time, they may not be obvious at all.
A professional resume review can help identify issues such as vague job titles, missing terminology, buried certifications or skills, overly complicated formatting, and job descriptions that do not clearly communicate your level of experience.
At RSG Health Services, our particular expertise is within radiology, cardiology, and laboratory, giving us an additional understanding of how experience, credentials, and specialties within these fields should be presented.
An MRI Technologist should not be marketed exactly like an Interventional Radiology Technologist.
A Cardiac Sonographer should not be presented the same way as a General Sonographer.
But the principle applies across professions:
A professional resume service should not invent qualifications. It should communicate the qualifications you already have more effectively.
RSG Candidates Have Another Advantage
There is also one important difference when you are working with RSG on one of our opportunities.
We submit qualified candidates directly to the recruiting and hiring teams we work with.
Rather than simply telling you to submit an online application and hope your resume is discovered in a large applicant pool, we can introduce qualified professionals directly to our client contacts.
That gives us an opportunity to provide context that an online application cannot always capture, including relevant experience, career goals, and why we believe a candidate is worth speaking with.
For those specific opportunities, that direct connection can remove some of the uncertainty that comes with applying through a general online hiring system.
But that does not make your resume less important. Your resume is still part of the introduction we make to the hiring team.
When we put your experience directly in front of a client, we want the document they receive to clearly show why we believe you are worth speaking with.
And RSG will not be involved in every position you apply for throughout your career.
A strong resume is something you take with you.
Your Resume Has More Than One Audience Now
The hiring process has changed.
Your resume may be reviewed by software, a recruiter, a department manager, or all three.
That does not mean you need to become an expert in hiring algorithms.
You do not need to chase an arbitrary ATS score, and you do not need to fill your resume with keywords until it stops sounding like you.
You need a resume that clearly and accurately communicates what you bring to the table.
Because regardless of who, or what, reviews it first, the goal remains the same:
Make your qualifications difficult to overlook.
Is It Time to Take Another Look at Your Resume?
If you are applying for positions that closely match your experience but are not getting the response you expected, your resume may be worth another look.
The experience may already be there.
The question is whether your resume is communicating it effectively.