How to Help your Resume Beat the Algorithm
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Beating the algorithm should be at the top of your to-do list when you decide it’s time to start a job search. Whether it’s by choice or a layoff during the pandemic the first thing you might want to do is fix your resume. However, if you decide fixing your resume starts in a Google doc, you’re doing it wrong.
This is not to say that your resume isn't immensely important in the job search process (it is!) but landing the job doesn’t start with writing your resume. You wouldn’t prep for writing a book by booking venues for a book tour so why would you prep for landing the job you want without figuring out where you want to work first?
Before you land the job and before you write the resume you need to first find jobs that you’d like to apply for. That’s the way to ensure your resume is as impactful as possible. Having ideal job postings at your side when you’re crafting your resume is what’s going to help you beat the algorithm and land on a recruiters desk.
How to Beat the Algorithm with Job Descriptions
When you apply for a job, a recruiter is rarely the first person to see your resume. Your resume actually encounters “the algorithm” or an applicant tracking system before hopefully reaching the recruiter’s desk. The goal of the applicant tracking system is to make hiring easier for recruiters/employers who would otherwise have to sort hundreds or thousands of applications by hand.
Instead they rely on this tool to sort through applications and make their lives simpler. So the goal of your resume isn’t just to impress a recruiter, you have to impress a computer first. The computer doesn’t care what your resume physically looks like, but it wants to know from your content that you’re actually qualified to apply for the job.
The applicant tracking system will scan your resume to identify that keywords in the job posting are present in your resume to decide whether or not you should move on. For example, if you’re applying for a senior marketing position and it doesn’t appear you have any previous marketing experience, the applicant tracking system will likely tag you as not a fit and put your resume in the reject pile. You won’t move forward in the application process just because they don’t recognize your previous content creator role was data heavy and directly contributed to increasing the new customer conversion rate by 15%. A person can read between the lines but the algorithm needs you to be blunt.
This means beating the algorithm is built around speaking like it does. Use the job description as your cheat sheet by incorporating keywords from into your resume. Without doing this, you’re risking downplaying your skillset and ending up in the reject pile.
How to Incorporate Keywords into your Resume
When I work 1-on-1 with clients to update their resume I ask them to bring 2-3 job descriptions they are interested in pursuing. We then go through these descriptions line by line pulling out keywords from the job posting and then matching them up with bullet points in their resume and revising as necessary to strengthen it.
Image Source: Job Application for Growth Marketing Analyst, Paid Social at Brooklinen
For example, let’s look at the first bullet point in this job description from Brooklinen, “creating weekly slide decks to report on Facebook performance to share with the wider team.” If you are coming from a similar role, it’s likely that you created reports to regularly share results but your resume may not explicitly say “weekly slide decks.”. Although “writing weekly reports” is similar in practice to “weekly slide decks” the applicant tracker system will not recognize it as such and it will assume you don’t have that experience.
In this posting, Facebook also comes up multiple times so it’s not enough to include “paid ad” or “paid social” experience in your resume. Instead you’ll need to incorporate phrases like “Facebook ads”, “Facebook budget or Facebook ad budget” and/or “Facebook Ads Manager”.
You’d also want to incorporate any acronyms used if they are found in the job posting. Make sure to include them as they are written here, for example use CPC instead of the phrase cost per customer.
Beating the Algorithm by Speaking the Language of the Recruiters
What do you do when the job posting doesn’t have a lot of technical or concrete skills and instead relies on you demonstrating efficiency in non-technical skills? This is where you lean very hard into mining job posts for keywords to mimic language of recruiters while demonstrating your skills.
Image Source: Product Operations Coordinator, Winc via Career Contessa
This job posting from Winc heavily relies on demonstrating efficiency and organization skills so it makes sense to start with any tangible skills first and then adjusting bullet points to include as many keywords as possible. In my experience, a resume without at least one of the phrases “supply chain” or “logistics management” would not make it into my hands as a recruiter if I was hiring for this role.
There are other words that pop up frequently in this job posting such as “organization” and “efficiency” but also don’t forget to add in phrases exactly as they are written. Words such as track, organize, manage, coordinate, efficient and process stand out here so I’d make sure to incorporate phases that use these words. Phrases such as:
track and organize landed costs of individual projects
process dry goods purchase orders with vendors
managing and retaining the data
evolve process that you oversee, bringing efficiency and a reduction in errors
The goal of writing a resume to entice an applicant tracking system is entirely built around wooing the recruiter. If you do the work of basing your resume around a job description, you’re demonstrating to the recruiter that you pay attention to detail and aren’t wasting their time applying for a role you’re not a solid fit for.
If you want to dive a little deeper and apply this energy to all of your job search materials, you can download my free guide Climb the Ladder: A Recruiter’s Guide to Landing the Job [LINK] and start working towards the job you’re made to have.
Ready to make a change?
Grab my step by step guide Climb the Ladder: a Recruiters Guide to Landing the Job to help you stand out during each step of your journey.