Employers today are facing many more applicants than there are open assignments available. In many instances, there are literally hundreds of applications and resumes being received for a single open position.
One way business owners and hiring managers are going about the process of sorting through the long line of resumes is with the assistance of an employee tracking system.
Why are Employers Turning to Tracking Systems?
While some job candidates feel slighted by the process altogether, employee tracking systems are a valuable tool for recruiters. However difficult it is to know that you’re investing time, effort, and energy into the job search process only to be removed from consideration by a computer program or algorithm, it’s oftentimes necessary to manage candidate selection.
Companies aren’t likely to change their stand on candidate tracking systems for several reasons, including these.
1) Employee tracking systems save time. Businesses today are being forced to do more work with fewer people. It’s a given. The one thing they don’t have in excess is free time to sift through hundreds of applications to find the few standout candidates. If they did have the time, there wouldn’t be a need to hire more workers.
2) These systems help businesses avoid any appearance of discrimination or any other type of hiring misconduct. The systems don’t judge suitability based on age, religion, race, or any other defining and legally protected characteristic that doesn’t pertain to the responsibilities of the job and experience in the industry. Even better, for many business owners, is that the system makes it easy for them to show compliance with federal laws concerning discrimination if a question ever does arise.
3) Tracking systems save businesses money. In the end, that’s what it generally comes down too. Many of the systems are free for businesses to us and it frees up precious man hours (that cost quite a bit of money) to be spent on the business of making money for the company rather than reading through resume after resume.
What do Candidate Tracking Systems Mean for Job Seekers?
The long and short answer is that they mean you must learn to create resumes designed to make it past the employment tracking software. Once you begin creating resumes intended to make it through the first round of elimination you should start to see a few more calls for interviews coming your way. Here are a few steps you’ll want to keep in mind when creating resumes for these systems.
1) Create resumes the systems can read. Most of these systems cannot read PDF files and have a difficult time understand graphs and tables. The simple solution is to leave them off your resume.
2) Include work experience on your resume and label it as “work experience.” This is language the systems are taught to read and comprehend. The order of items in this section is also important. List the place of employment first, followed by the job title, and then the dates of employment. Creativity was once the key component. Now, however, you want to design resumes to appeal to the sorting software.
3) Write a longer resume. Short and sweet was once the order of the day. The rules have changed once again. Longer resumes give you more opportunities to work the appropriate keywords the company is looking for into your resume. Fill out your resume and create one that is 2 to 4 pages long instead.
Once you understand why employers are using employee tracking systems and what the systems want from you, you are in a much better position to help yourself make it through to the interview process.
Enjoy a previous post on a job search related topic from Davis Staffing: