Everything falls into place when you discover your ideal software position. You are experienced. You have a portfolio. You submit your resume and then wait.
Nothing happens.
No phone calls or emails about an interview. No decline notifications.
This situation doesn’t necessarily mean that your experience is not enough; it could be that you failed to translate your experience effectively through your resume to the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Your resume goes through scanning, parsing, categorizing, and ranking before a recruitment specialist even takes a look at it.
This is how you make your software/IT resume compatible with the ATS while keeping it interesting.
- Start With a Resume That Can Actually Be Parsed Nevertheless, a good-looking resume will be absolutely useless in the event the required information will be lost because of ATS resume parsing. The complex format, which includes multi-columns, floating text boxes, icons, images, skill rating bar, unusual fonts, etc., can make information parsing harder for some resume parsers. To play safe, here is a list of resume parsing optimization tips: • Make sure you are using standard headers such as Skills, Experience, Projects, Education, Certification. • Make sure your dates and job titles are formatted consistently. • Use a simple one-column resume format. • Do not put crucial information within icons/images. • Use readable fonts and logical spacing. Consider your resume as code and make sure that it has logical structure.
- Resume Data Extraction Test This simple test is ignored by many job seekers. The text from your resume must be copied and pasted into the plain text editor. Check if your name, contact information, skills, dates, projects, experience, etc., were extracted properly. This simple resume data extraction test is extremely useful before you start applying. Also look out for the clarity of important technologies. Don’t use only abbreviations if more information about terminology can increase clarity. Instead of: “Worked on PBI dashboards.” Better would be: “Created Power BI dashboards to perform campaigns analysis.” Small changes will make your resume better for machines and people to understand.
- Stop Keyword Stuffing—Use Them Contextually Putting “Java, SQL, AWS, Python, Power BI” everywhere doesn’t work anymore. Your goal is to integrate keywords contextually in your resume. Study the position description and find the right technologies, responsibilities, methodologies, and skills you have. Then prove them. Weak: “Have knowledge of SQL, Power BI, and Excel.” Better: “Performed analysis of 15,000+ records of campaigns by means of SQL and Excel and created Power BI dashboard.” The second one will explain to the recruiter what you’ve done.
- Turn Responsibilities Into Evidence “Responsible for dashboard creation” tells very little. “Developed four interactive dashboards that reduced weekly reporting time by 35%” adds immediate context. Wherever possible, add resume metrics in your accomplishments like: • % Increase/Reduction • # Users/records • Response Time • Bugs fixed • # Completed projects • # Reporting hours saved • Uptime percentage • Frequency of deployment Using metric-driven resume writing techniques will make your technical experience more credible and understandable. Freshers can also use metrics. You can get these numbers from your college projects, internships, live projects, GitHub projects, testing data, datasets, or personal applications.
- Use Powerful Technical Action Words Look at the following two lines: “Worked on application issues.” “Diagnosed production incidents using application logs and SQL queries, documented root causes and helped in resolving the issue.” Same candidate. Different outcome. Some useful contextual verbs for software and IT resumes are: • Developed • Automated • Analyzed • Debugged • Deployed • Optimized • Integrated • Configured • Tested • Monitored • Troubleshot • Implemented The key to successful resume writing does not only lie in choosing strong verbs but connecting each one with your accomplishments, tools, and changes it caused.
- Customize the Resume for the Role While having a single resume for all jobs seems like time-saving practice, it often results in submitting a generic application. For instance, Java developer and application support roles may both need experience in SQL; however, the recruiters look for different sets of additional skills and projects. That is the reason why every ATS resume optimization for IT jobs should be done individually for each application that matters. Training programs that encourage project reporting and effective technical communication can facilitate this task. As an example, SparkTech Pro Agile is one of the leading IT training agencies in Pune, which pays attention to practical experience, which candidates can apply while completing their project-oriented resumes. But it does not necessarily mean that you have to write a new resume every single time. Customize Your Resume Summary, Skills Balance, Projects and Achievements Statement to the Job Advertisement Your Resume Should Be Reflecting Your Experience Related to This Position Speaking about ATS friendly resumes, you should always keep in mind that there are no specific tricks used while working with this software. You just have to present your experience in such a manner, which will allow the recruiters to understand you properly. Make the proper resume format. Make sure it is easily extracted. Use correct wording and verbs. Add some numbers into your achievements. But most importantly, your resume should highlight your skills. The resume has only several seconds to provide one answer: “Who should we take into consideration on the next stage of selection?” Provide this resume this chance in each section of your resume. Frequently Asked Questions
- What is an ATS friendly resume? ATS friendly resume is a resume that has correct format, heading, keywords, and structure to be processed by ATS.
- Should I make my resume in two-column form for IT positions? The safer choice here will be to have a single column.
- How many keywords should I include? There is no definite number of keywords that you should include. Choose only those which are relevant to the job position and include them in your resume.
- Can freshers prepare metric-based resumes? Yes. Freshers can give data related to their projects in terms of dataset, features, test cases, bugs fixed, dashboards created, API endpoints, and so on.
- Should I make different resumes for all IT jobs? No. You don't have to start right from scratch. Just keep a good master resume and tweak accordingly.
