Is Your CV/Resume Rejected by a Robot?

Let's accept it: When you apply for a job online using popular job portals including LinkedIn, the first person to read your CV/Resume is a ROBOT (popularly known as ATS or application tracking system). ATS/Robot's first job is to filter out 'toilet papers' (i.e. long resumes) from 'resumes'. It does not stop there. It looks for specific keywords, phrases, experience, education, professional background and sometimes even spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

Hundreds of applicants are not read/reviewed by any HR/Hiring Managers. More often than not, the system will throw 10% the top applicants ranked in an order that algorithm finds best fit. It is only after this that a human eye falls on your 'resume'. In order to mitigate this software filtering, people have come up with ideas like 'referral' and/or 'networking' (and I am sure you must have understood that while this process isn't as painful as being rejected by a robot; it is still not painless).

So what do you do?

Come on linkedin and write a rant on how you've applied at 50+ jobs 
and yet faced rejection after rejection. 
You go on to beg people to like your post and comment for better 
reach in hopes of getting a recruiter/hiring manager hire/call you 
out of sympathy? 
You know you've been there reading a few posts like this 
where people comment #cfbr.        

Do you know anyone who landed their 'dream job' doing that? I guess not.

So what should we do?

Remember among several job openings that are fit for your skill, only one of them needs to materialise (unless you're planning for moonlighting in which case may be 2 or 3 needs to materialise while your health takes a toll). Life must have taught you that nothing is 'absolutely perfect'. This is true for your resume as well. However, it can be improved.

• Find top 50 companies based on your biased preferences (you know how some people love the city they live in and cannot afford to relocate) and set customised google alerts on them. The moment someone posts a job, guess who gets a notification. You, my friend, you - see this example that landed on my friend's mailbox. Early bird gets the worm and early applicant gets the job (no one who applies post 30 days of job posting gets hired).

• Know the difference between a real job posting and a fake one. I hope you know by now, that all job postings are not real. Even cricket matches are fixed sometimes. Don't complain. Just know.
• Tailoring your resume based on the job you're applying for (either on job portals or via referral). How to tailor? Well, use your friend (not me). Use ChatGPT. It is doing it so conveniently and easily (in minutes). If you paste the job description: it will give you keywords, action words, create your cover letter that can guarantee that every software will rank your CV to the top for that job profile.
• Get free AI softwares to proof read, improve, enhance your CV regularly. You don't need to pay any consultant who knows nothing about you to create your CV. Humans make spelling and grammatical mistakes. Robots don't. Humans don't catch spelling and grammatical mistakes easily. Robots do. Humans have biases. Robots have less. Know the difference and learn to appreciate it.
• Congratulations that you're made it past the robot. Welcome to human biases now. Human eye likes things that look good. I don't need to convince you around this. Life must have hinted that already. So how do you make your CV look good? No, don't put your picture :). Just do the good stuff : consistent format, crisp summary, highlight the skills ChatGPT told you to, use action words, don't make stupid spelling mistakes and skip putting details that no once cares about like your marital status (unless specifically asked for).

Other than above, create a combination of pull market and push market. This does not happen overnight. This is part of being a professional. You can't simply start pushing your CV to unknown hiring managers or HRs. Brand yourself - easier said than done. Think about it though - do you buy products at market just because somebody is pushing the sell OR you buy it when you've heard about the brand, know something about it OR your friend/colleague used it and said nice things about it. Job market isn't that different. You have a price tag (brands selling same products with their logo get a better price for brand value)

Once you've almost landed the job, do not low ball yourself. Know your worth. Negotiation is as much of an important skill as is coding, analysis, management, leadership etc. Read about it. Learn how to negotiate. Learn how to say 'no' (you did not do all the above hard work to get peanuts).

Ah yes, don't lie on your resume. There's no bigger turn off than to find out that you're a liar.

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