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When you apply for a job online, you usually receive an automated message thanking you for applying, followed later by either an interview invitation, or a rejection email.
These invitation and rejection emails that you are receiving are from the Applicant Tracking System (ATS), meaning that your CV/application either matches or does not match the combination of required education, experience, keywords, and job description requested. It is important to know how to work with the ATS, as most employers today use it to receive and review applications, incl 75% of large companies.
For veterans in particular, this can be more difficult due to the tendency to use acronyms and other military terms not recognized by the ATS. Despite the daunting nature of stitching, if you know how to work with their system rather than against it, you may be able to access more opportunities due to your military status and military work ethic.
Here are some of the main things to look for when applying through ATS. Use this as a reference to beat the system after consulting our other guides for resume writing tips, tools for translating military terminology, and seeking additional help from nonprofits like Hire Heroes USA.
coordination
When applying through the applicant tracking system, your resume will usually be pasted in plain text for ease of use for the reader. Because of this, if your resume is in an unconventional format, you may be excluded from the pool of candidates.
- Common Mistakes: Your name, address, or contact information will not be pasted into the header or footer of your resume in plain text by ATS. If the recruiter filters applications with missing information, you will be disqualified. Also, if you have a “dummy” resume format that contains text boxes or lines that divide the resume vertically, some of your resume information may not be pasted, resulting in the loss of large chunks of experience for the application.
- Our tip: Check with a seasoned transition consultant if you’re not sure if your resume needs additional formatting. Organizations such as Hire Heroes USA or US Vets also have resume writing assistance.
Required qualifications
In most job descriptions, you’ll see summaries of required and preferred qualifications. To make sure that the ATS and the reader see these qualifications clearly, place them in the first third of your resume.
- Common Mistakes: If you don’t put a professional summary on your resume, you’re losing a lot of real estate matching keywords. Your summary is a great way to incorporate everything your ATS is looking for, all in the first few lines. It also allows you to talk about your education, years of experience, and areas of expertise, so that when it comes down to the recruiter, you can easily demonstrate your worth and suitability for the job.
- Our advice: [Consult veteran landing page] To help add the right keywords to your profile and match them with the qualifications required for the position.
Hard skills
Hard skills refer to job qualities that you must know, such as technical skills, programming knowledge, or direct practical knowledge. If the position lists skills and/or experience that are relevant to your ability to perform the role, be sure to highlight those areas in each of your previous work records for not only keyword reach, but keyword frequency as well.
- Common Mistakes: Don’t copy-paste keywords directly into your resume to land on the right terms and meet the algorithm! Most ATS’s are smart, and will rank you not only on whether keywords are present, but also on their frequency, and how well they are incorporated into the text (so listing “project management” 5 times in a row on your resume and changing the text to white won’t work in your favor ).
- Our advice: Make sure the skills you demonstrate from your military experience match the skills required for the position. Typical hard skills you may have acquired during your military career might be project management, operations manager, quality assurance expert, administrative coordinator, or technical program assistant, but see our ZipCares Veterans page for more in-depth look at military skill transfer tools to corporate language.
Soft skills
Many online opportunities also indicate the candidate’s preferred personal qualities, such as “innovative,” “passionate,” and “able to work independently.” These are soft skills that relate to a company’s cultural fit, and are tracked by ATS as well. You can include these words in your career summary to boost your ATS rating, and give yourself an edge over other candidates who only focus on hard skills.
- Common Mistakes: Many job seekers do not think that these qualities are important, because they are not directly related to the position. Don’t make this mistake – get a higher average in the pool of applicants by incorporating these buzzwords into your professional summary or cover letter on your application.
- Our advice: No matter what type of company or organization you’re applying to, you should definitely highlight your team-building, adaptability, flexibility, and problem-solving skills when demonstrating useful soft skills. If you’ve saved any of your old “ratings” from the service, you can try to incorporate what previous moderators said there as well.
Although designing your resume and applying for individual jobs can be tiring, it pays to make it a habit to get to know ATS, apply the right keywords, and focus on highlighting your relevant experience. It’s a fact that job seekers who integrate design into their apps get 3x more calls back and invitations for interviews, so know it’s worth the effort! If it helps, you can try to think of the process a bit like a warm-up for your supervisors to get a better feedback. The process of working with the system rather than fighting it is never-ending, so the better you master it, the more successful you will be in the long run!