The Robot Friendly Resume

Robot Resume Infographic from Mashable.com

This week on Mashable they posted “Meet the Robots Reading Your Resume“.  It’s a great piece (no surprise, their content is typically top notch) & does a great job of explaining why companies use applicant tracking systems (ATS) to track resume.   The real money in this article for candidates is the last half of both the article and the info graphic.  The do’s and don’ts of writing robot friendly resumes is spot on.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Do use keywords

Keywords are very important in your resume but don’t just throw in words you think employers want to hear.  Statements still have to make sense and they still have to show what you’ve accomplished.  Key-wording your resume is not an excuse for list a job description instead of accomplishments.

Do use spellcheck

I wish this didn’t have to be one of my favorites but it is.  It’s so simple yet so many people ignore it.  If keywords are misspelled, the robots will miss them.

Don’t get too fancy

You’ve been told your resume has to be eye catching and unique to stand out to employers.  Robots don’t care about your fancy pants formatting.  I know this is hard for us creative types to understand but there really is a place for a clean, white paper resume.  If you build a creative resume, make sure you have a traditionally formatted, white paper version of the same one that you can upload when necessary.

Don’t force yourself into a 1 page resume

As we’ve shared in a past blog post, resumes take as many pages as they take.  This is not an excuse to make stuff up to fill up pages, but don’t force yourself to stick to just one page.  Robots don’t know how many pages your resume takes up as they’re only scanning the content.

For assistance in writing a robot friendly resume (in addition to a people friendly one) contact us today at resumes@merrfeld.com