Transcripts
1. Introduction: It's a modern day struggle. Everywhere you look, you see signs that there are lots of jobs available. And yet, when you apply, even though you know you are qualified, you don't hear anything back? Well, it might not be you, it might be your resume and it might be an ATS system that simply can't read it. So what is an ATS system? Applicant tracking system? It's what hiring managers use for the hiring process to help them. I used to put so much effort into my resumes to make them look beautiful and organized and just very visually appealing. I would go above and beyond because to me that shows that I care and that I can be professional and I have a lot of applicable skills. However, one day when I was working on my resumes and jobs, I got an email from Indeed saying, Hey, why don't you run your resume through our ATS scanner and we'll give you feedback. It'll just be an automatic process to let you know what our ATS sees. Foil without eye opening. Running my resume through that. I learned that my format was not working, that my font was wrong. Basically, what I put in showed words that were misspelled, including my last job name. It showed 2.5 years of experience out of the eight that I have listed just was all wrong. So no wonder I wasn't getting emailed back about jobs that I was applying for. So after making adjustments and a little trial and error, I finally got it to a point where it recognized everything that was on my resume correctly. And I did a little more research to find out what exactly had gone wrong the first time. In my research, I ultimately found out that simplicity is vital to having an ATS readable resume. So that's what we're going to cover here. Let me introduce myself. My name is Morgan Schreiber and I create stories. I'm a professional author, performer, filmmaker, and I just learn things as I go. My background is predominantly feeder. I got my degree in theater directing. I have pursued a lot of theater opportunities through acting directing ran my own theater company for a time, and currently I am exploring filmmaking as an art. I also however, became fascinated with small business and entrepreneurship and things like that at the end of my college experience and since then I've worked for startups, I've worked for non-profits, a whole variety that had given me a lot of experience and knowledge through all of that, being thrown into a variety of scenarios, I learned that the most valuable skill I had, learning on my feet and being able to teach myself how to do things. So fast forward to now, I have taught myself how to create online classes, how to create YouTube videos, and now how to create an ATS friendly resume. And most importantly, I want to share that information with you. So what you'll learn in this class are things like the basics. What is an ATS? I'll also talk about what hiring managers might see after your resume gets put in through this ETS, I will talk about the sections that are important to have in your resume. I will talk about fonts and formatting, which is a huge deal when it comes to making sure that your resume is readable for that ETS, I will talk about information to include or exclude based on the feedback that I received from my ats scan as well. And then we'll also talk about whether or not it's better to do a PDF or a Doc X. Now this class is not a guarantee that you're going to get called for an interview or you can get the job. But what this class is is I hope that it will provide a little more clarity and transparency around the hiring and applying process. So in the next video, let's talk about what the class project is and jump right in.
2. The Project: Alright, so for this project, for this class, as the title of the class implies, we're going to be creating an ATS friendly resume. So we are not going to be focusing on the content so much of this, we're going to be looking a lot at the format and what's going to be most readable by an ATS. So it does help if you already have an old resume or the information written out in a list. But basically all of the content that you're going to be putting into your resume if you have that already, great. If you don't, this might be a good place to go ahead and pause, write out a list so that you have it. And then we will talk about how to go ahead and put that into your resume. By the end of this, you should have a one to two-page resume that is ready to submit. So let's jump into the next class and talk about what an ATS is.
3. What is an ATS?: All right. So let's break down what an ATS. Ats stands for applicant tracking system. What this is is a system that hiring managers use to ultimately streamline the hiring process. It makes it a lot easier for them to go through all the different candidates. It's used especially by larger companies. So if you are applying for a mom-and-pop shop or something that is much smaller, has a smaller team. They probably aren't using an ATS system, especially if you see that they say go ahead and email your resume to this email address, That's not going through an ATS system necessarily. And so you might have a better chance of using your nicer fancier resume. However, if you're applying to a large company or you're applying through Indeed, or something like that. Those are going to be using ATS systems and you're going to want to use your simpler resume that we're creating here. So this system often will convey important information to the hiring manager by scanning your resume. Now that can be demonstrating how many misspelled words you have, how many typos, because that can be important for a lot of jobs. It could relay the percentage of comparison, basically your resume to the job description, finding how close of a match our u to this job description. And that's going to be based off of keywords and past experience, things like that. It could show your last job title. It could show the number of years of work experience that you have listed on your resume. So this is all very important. And if it doesn't accurately display or scan this information, it's going to cause problems for you because then a hiring manager is going to see something incorrect. They're going to see that you're not as high of a match for the job as you may be actually are. If you're like me, they're going to see 2.5 years of experience out of eight. So ultimately, it's not great if your resume is not scannable by this ats. So when I had my resume before, I had multiple columns because I had my skills over to the right while I have my work experience on the left, I included a recommendation that somebody had written me in just a short paragraph to the side, I had all this information and it just wasn't scanning correctly. So I had to go back through and I had to cut out so much stuff and turn it into a single column and completely adjusted. There was a lot of trial and error. And ultimately, I got to a point where my resume was readable. But it was just very simple. So that is why I said in my intro video that simplicity ultimately is going to be what's going to work best here. It may not be the prettiest or most aesthetically pleasing, which can be very frustrating, especially if you really like to put in that extra effort. But you can always save that resume for later taken, the pretty one to the interview and impress them there. But leave the simple one for the ATS system. In the next video, we're going to go over the sections that you should be including in your resume.
4. Sections: All right, so we're gonna talk about the sections that you should be including in your resume. Now, I'm just going to cover the very basics because there are certain parts or things that may change as time goes on. I know there are certain trends of what is popular to put on your resume, what hiring managers want to see. So it's always good to do your own research and see exactly what the popular trend is at the time it used to be that you wanted to put an objective and now that's out. And so, yeah, just keep an eye on what the popular trend is at the time. But the basic, basic, basic information that you want to have on there as you want to have your work experience and you want to have your education experience if you have it. So let's start at the top of the resume. First off, a note to keep in mind for an ATS system is do not use the headers or footers. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. But there is an option in most typing softwares to put something at the hand or foot. And usually this is used for titles or it can be used for page numbers, things like that. Just don't put information in there. If you use page numbers, that's not going to mess anything up too bad. I wouldn't worry about it too much because your resume should only be one to two pages, but definitely do not put information in those sections. It could affect the ATS. So moving on to the start, you want to make sure that you have your name at the top of the page. You want to have your contact information. You also want to include basic information about where you live. You do not need to put your address, your full address on there, but go ahead and put your city, your state, and your zip code, or your city and your region in your area code, depending on where you live, this is all going to look a little bit different and this information is based on US resumes typically. But general practice is to not put your full address. They don't need to know exactly where you live. They just need to know that you're in a specific city or in a certain area. Definitely don't forget though to include contact information like your email and your phone number. Those are super, super important obviously because if you don't include those, then how is the hiring manager ever going to get in contact with you? The section that I like to include next is my skills. I feel that those are very important because those come from a variety of jobs. A really simplifies the reading experience for the hiring manager by putting all of my important valuable skills at the top so that then they can scan through the rest of my resume. And if they miss something, it's not as important. I put that priority information at the top. Now, there are other things that you can put up there. You can put a summary, you can put an objective. Again, this is where you're going to want to do a little bit of research and see what is popular at the time, what's recommended at the time. But I do like to put the most important information at the top. The next section that you're going to want to include is going to be your work experience. Or if you don't have work experience, you'll want to include any internships you might have, any volunteering that you might have. Basically anything that can be easily transferred or applicable towards working at the job that you're applying for. You're going to want to include that in your work experience. After that, you're going to want to follow it up with your education experience. Now, you're going to put whatever your highest levels of education are and different jobs are going to require different things. So if all you have is maybe high-school or GED, you're going to include that information there. If you would like with any of these, especially if you have like a bachelor's degree or something. You can also put a few details about what type of skills you may have learned while you were getting that education. But otherwise keep that section pretty simple. The next section is going to be work experience. If you don't have past work experience, go ahead and put any internships or volunteer jobs that you may have had there, anything that's going to be applicable towards the job that you're applying for. A general rule of thumb is you want to try to include five to ten years of work experience. Again, if you don't have that, you put whatever you do have. But you don't really need to go over 10 years at that point. Anything from more than ten years ago is not necessarily going to be applicable or considered towards the job that you are applying force. So if you have 1520 years of experience or more, and it starts piling up and you have even close to maybe three sheets of your resume, you're really going to want to trim it down. You definitely do not want to include three sheets for your resume unless there is absolutely no choice and it is information that must be relayed, but otherwise, really try to keep that down to one or two pages. If you're having trouble with your work experience section, if there are details that are not super straightforward or anything like that, there are professional resume writers out there and you can always try reaching out to them or doing your own research to see what the best format or way to lay that out and provide that information is going to be.
5. Fonts & Formatting: Let's talk about fonts and formatting. Now, based on my research, there are going to be some variations between ATS systems and what they recommend. But ultimately, if you stick with the tried and true fonts that are a little bit older and more commonly used, you're going to have the most success. So I did a little research and I found based on Indeed and job skins systems that there are 10 fonts that they recommend, which are these listed over to the side? That's going to be Garamond, Calibri, Cambria, Georgia, helvetica Times New Roman Arial, Palatino, Tom, Tahoma. And for Donna, these are very commonly used. You're going to find them in most systems, which is why they're going to read the easiest. I originally used a font that was basic looking and it was very modern and contemporary and pretty and like aesthetically pleasing. However, it was not a commonly used font, so it caused issues when it came to grammar and spelling. Like I said in the previous video, even my last job was misspelled according to the ATS, even though it was spelled correctly on my resume. Lo and behold, I change my font to something that is recommended on this list. And suddenly there were no typos or anything like that. It was clearly read. Anything that was recommended as a typo was just something that was like a business name that was unusual, things like that that you would normally see where it is actually correct. It's just not a word that's in the dictionary for that system. So definitely stick to those. I would highly, highly recommend sticking to one column. Again, I was a big fan of the two column resume. I feel like it looked great. It really added something to my resume aesthetically, it broke up the information and then it also wasn't readable. So I think sticking to a single column is your safest bet. Just keep that information in order because that ats is going to be scanning your resume from left to right. In most cases, it does obviously depend what country you are applying for and which direction the language is commonly read. But in a lot of the systems, especially in English-speaking countries, you're going to have from left to right, top to bottom. So you wanna make sure that your information is readable in that order. And coming back to font, you're going to want to use size 10 to 12 for the majority of your font on your resume, for your name or things like that, you can use 1618 somewhere around there. It really does depend what's going to work best for you and your resume. But as far as the main bulk of that resumes just stick to 10 to 12. So what I like to do is I keep the majority of my information in size ten and then I put the headers of my sections as size 12. And everything that you can do is you can play with using bold for your font. If you want to bold a header or if you want to bold the company that you worked for or your job title. Again, it all depends on how you want to lay this out. The Bolding is purely for the person. It is not going to matter to the ATS. They're not going it's not going to pick up what you're trying to point out. However, Bolding is also not going to affect the scan. As long as you're using the 10 friendly fonts, I would not underline anything. The lines could affect the scan a little bit. It really again, just depends on the system. And same goes for italicizing. That sudden slight angle of the font could change how it's reading the words or how well it's understanding them. So only play with bold is my recommendation, but ultimately it is your resume is up to you. I also did play with color a little bit in mind. I need the headers for my sections, a different color. Again, this is going to be purely for the human behind the screen. The ATS does not care and it may in fact take that resume and just make it all black anyway when it spits it out on the other side. So it might not matter, but it was my little bit of rebellion to make sure that I had something aesthetically pleasing to me in that resume. It's up to you whether or not you want to play with color. All right, so let's jump into the next section, which is going to be basic information to include or exclude all based on my research using the ATS system and what is common practice at this point in time. This is going to be a super simplified version because again, as time changes, what's trending as far as what to include in your resume does change. But these are just kind of the basic tried and true do's and don'ts.
6. What to Include (or Not): All, so we're gonna talk about information to include or exclude on your resume. So as I said before, you don't need to include your full address. You just want to make sure that hiring managers know the general region that you currently live in so that they know whether or not you're even in the same state or area. Your zip code is going to be super helpful for pregnant and providing that information. So generally just sticking to city, state, zip code, region, that sort of thing is going to be best-practice. You wouldn't handout your personal address to a stranger on the street. So you really don't need to do that here. And it is awkward for the hiring manager and it is safer for you just to not include that information. So don't worry about that portion of your address. Do include contact information, your email address, and your phone number. So you want to make sure that hiring manager can actually reach you when they want to schedule that interview. If you don't have a cell phone and then you're going to want to clarify that you have a landline or home phone or something like that. Most of the time hiring managers anymore, I'm just going to assume that it is a cell phone. So if it is a landline or a home phone, go ahead and put in parentheses home. This is important because like I said in a previous video that sometimes certain ATS systems, they will have the ability to send texts. You won't necessarily get the information or the text through your home phone. Sometimes they will still send it in kind of a strange way, but just for clarity sake, so that the hiring manager is not having to jump through loopholes to try to get a hold of you are figuring out why they can't get a hold of you. Go ahead and include if it's a landline, just become something that used to be popular was including your references with your resume. I generally would do this as a third sheet since it was technically separate from my resume or when he started making my fancier two column resume, I would put over to this side. But then I learned that you don't actually need to include your references when you are first applying. So don't worry about that. That is taking up valuable space that would be better used to put your work experience and things like that. When a hiring manager is ready to talk to you or talk to your references, they can ask you for your references. This may vary a little bit, but currently that is the general rule is to just save that for later. Something that has definitely been best-practice for a while now is to diversify the words that you're using on your resume. Now that's going to be keywords, that's going to be your verbs, things like that. You just want to make sure that you don't have five created items in a row and your work experience. So just make sure that you are using thesaurus, whether that is a physical thesaurus or something like the source.com. And go ahead and diversify. There are going to be points where words like created or developed are produced, are going to be what makes the most sense. That's what's going to be applicable on your resume. However, if you can find a different word, go ahead and find a different word and use that. Makes sure that you are using spellcheck of some sort and maybe having somebody look over your resume just to give you feedback, things like that. It is so important when you're trying to impress somebody that you have things spelled correctly and you don't have small grammatical errors. Those are super easy to have in a resume or in anything that you're writing. It's understandable because you're having to type things out. It's not necessarily how the brain works, but that's why you want to make sure that you go over that repeatedly, have someone else double-check it to make sure that you haven't missed anything. Just go over it with a fine tooth column as best you can to get all of those errors out of there because that ats will pick those up and it will highlight them to the hiring manager. Something else that is best practice right now is to avoid using pronouns in your resume. So that's going to be he, she, they, them, any of those you want to avoid using them as best as possible, as well as any descriptors that might describe your appearance or someone else's appearance, anything like that, just keep it very neutral. If you do have somewhere where you need to include pronouns, just go ahead and stick with them. That's very neutral. It's not going to describe really anything. It's just going to keep it kind of a blank slate while you're still allowed to tell your story. But as much of that as you can exclude from your resume, probably best. All right. As we get to the end of what we're including in your resume. In the next video, we are going to talk about PDF versus Doc X and which file format is going to work best for you.
7. PDF vs. .docx: Okay, so now you should have basically all the information that you need in your resume. You should have a pretty good idea of the do's and don'ts what to include, what not to include what to be aware of. So now we're just going to talk about what file format do you use when you're submitting these? Now, I feel the automatic Goto and the one that I tend to prefer is PDF. A PDF is super nice because it's going to keep things very where they're supposed to be. An issue that used to come up. I know in past years with docx documents or DOC ex documents was that things would shift sometimes even then the process of emailing or things like that. Because it was a looser formatted, flexible formats and editable format, things can sometimes shift and you can have problems there. That doesn't happen as often anymore, so you are not going to run into issues of that as much. I still generally prefer PDF just to avoid any of that. However, you do want to make sure that you pay attention when you are submitting your resume to and ats, you want to double-check what file formats they accept. If it says that accepts PDF, then you are good to go. If PDF is not listed as one of the acceptable documents or the range is very small and tends to focus on Doc X or anything like that. You probably want to go ahead and download your resume as a Doc X and then include that there. It really does depend on the system again. So you're going to want to just keep an eye on what type of file formats they're asking for and use your best judgment. And ultimately, you won't know because you don't get to see that other end of the ATS. So if something does go wrong in translation, unfortunately, there's not much you can do about it. But just stick to these two types of file formats and you're probably going to be safe. Now if you're like me and you do not actually have Microsoft Word, there are other ways that you can create a Doc X document or a PDF. I personally use Google. With that. I can download as either of those document formats, you can export it. It's totally easy to use. It's a little bit different than Microsoft Word. So if you are familiar with Microsoft Word and you end up switching over to Google, there's going to be a little bit of a learning curve, but otherwise, pretty similar options there. Another option if you don't want to use Google or if you don't have access to it or anything like that, is you can checkout OpenOffice. Openoffice is very, very similar to Microsoft Word, except it's free. So feel free to give that a shot that also will allow you to download or print as PDF. It really just depends on which going with same with the DOC ex option, that either of those are going to be free options that you can use to create the same document that you would using Microsoft Word.
8. Final Thoughts: All right, So at this point you should have an ATS friendly resume or at least all the information that you need to create an ATS friendly resume. I hope this class was very helpful in providing clarity and information in a very frustrating process, I know that applying for jobs can be extraordinarily stressful and it's very frustrating when you don't know why you're not hearing back. So I really genuinely hope that this has helped you to better understand that and create that simpler resume that is going to be accurately read by the ATS is out there. And I wish you the best on your job search. If you liked this video in this class, I do create other classes kind of in the same format. Again, I tend to be a self learner and I like to share my knowledge and experience of that journey. I think it provides another perspective. So if you did like this and you're interested in learning some more things like the creation or writing or anything like that, go give me a follow. But otherwise, I hope you take care again. Best of luck, and thank you for taking this class.
Morgan Schreiber, I create stories
