Learn how to ‘beat the bot’ - Applicant Tracking System secrets with Paula Grant

In this episode, host Leah Lambart, speaks to Relaunch Me resume & LinkedIn writer, Paula Grant, about the importance of keyword optimisation in resumes and LinkedIn to be competitive in a job search process.

Leah and Paula discuss the following:

What is keyword optimisation on a resume and why is this important?

What organisations are using Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSs) in the recruitment process?

Is keyword optimisation more important for some roles than others?

What is keyword optimisation on a LinkedIn profile and how this can help jobseekers and business owners/freelancers

For assistance with writing a keyword-optimised and ATS-friendly resume, please contact us via the Relaunch Me website.

www.relaunchme.com.au

If you are requiring support with finding your 'best fit' career, preparing for your next interview or need help with writing a keyword optimised Resume or LinkedIn Profile, then contact Leah Lambart and the team at Relaunch Me for further information or to book a coaching session.

If there is a career that you would like to learn more about, the please email me at leah@relaunchme.com.au to make a suggestion.

If you would like to support our podcast, we would love you to write a review on your podcast of choice.

Thanks for listening.

www.relaunchme.com.au

Transcript

Learn how to ‘beat the bot’ - Applicant Tracking System secrets with Paula Grant

[00:02] Leah Lambart: Welcome to the relaunch your career podcast. I am your host, Leah Lambart, career and interview coach and founder of Relaunch me, where we help you find the work that you were meant to do.

[00:24] Paula Grant: Welcome to the Relaunch your career podcast. Today I have our wonderful writer Paula Grant, who has quite called in from up in Queensland in Hope island. And today we're going to talk about applicant tracking systems and why it is important to have a resume that is keyword optimized. What does that mean? And how you can understand the process around keyword optimization and get some advice from Paula. Welcome to the podcast.

[00:53] Speaker C: Thanks so much Leah. I think this is going to be a really great piece of intel for our clients because it's something that is brought up in every consultation that I have with our clients. They have often heard of ATS or applicant tracking software or on the other side, they've never heard of it and want to know why it's so important. So I think this is really, really important and I'm excited to talk this through with you today. As I explained to our clients, one of the key changes in recruitment has been the introduction of these applicant tracking scanners, or applicant tracking systems. And the reason why they've come about is because business has gone really lean. You know, they're adopting technology to take some of the legwork and the hard work off their HR or recruitment team. And that's not always the best thing for people applying for jobs because essentially if we have somebody applying for a job and they are applying, whether it be on seek or LinkedIn or even via, indeed they are, more often than not, I think latest stats are around 80% of companies are using a built in system similar to AI, which is becoming, I guess, more prevalent in our everyday world where they are looking for keywords or key descriptors, out of job advertisements or their job description, and seeing if you marry up or match with their ideal candidate, what's actually happening is as they are applying for jobs, the applicant tracking software is scanning for keywords. And if that keyword is not in the resume, then they are instantly disregarded or put down to the bottom of the list. So this is a really, really important topic.

[02:42] Paula Grant: It's something that has been, I remember when I was working in consulting, it was about 15 years ago because it was just before my daughter was born and we were helping companies select and implement recruitment technology. And at the time, these systems were what we call resume parsing, which is where they extract all the information out of the resume based on these keywords. But at that time, it was probably just the really big corporates that were using these. Some of the universities where they had really high volume applicants or perhaps doing graduate programs where they might have 3000 applicants down to 20 jobs. What do you see now is that I think more and more companies are starting to use these systems and recruitment agencies as well.

[03:28] Speaker C: Yeah, very, very much so. Leah, I think you hit the nail on the head. I think one of the first companies that I know adopted the software was the Coles group. And they were recruiting for so many different jobs, everybody from a store manager through to a retail assistant. And there was a lot of difference in the job descriptors we are now seeing, as I said, I think about 80% of companies and certainly 100% of every recruitment firm I know using some form of applicant tracking software. Now there are dozens if not hundreds. There are hundreds of companies claiming to be applicant tracking software specialists. The background and the infrastructure doesn't change too much. The key players in this market are all searching for the same key things. And what I tell our clients is it's typically broken into five key areas. The first one is this buzzword. Keywords, jargon words, as sometimes people call them. They are essentially the hard and soft skills that are listed in a job ad. For example, the job ad may read something along the lines of, we are searching for a dynamic marketing manager with five plus years experience in fast moving goods, somebody that has a strong understanding of the supply chain, somebody that has experience in social media, management, technology and leadership. Those key words. So leadership, digital technology, supply chain, et cetera, will be punched into applicant tracking software and they will be the words that is being scanned for. The key thing here is to make sure that we don't put too many keywords in. There's a real balance because once we get through our ATS, which is always the first goal, a recruiter is going to read it. So we want to make sure that we are not too keyword heavy for the sake of just marrying up to a job ad. The second sector, which is often something that I talk to my clients about, and it either goes one way or the other, is brevity. So applicant tracking software looks for the length of a resume. Being an ideal of 900 to 1200 words. Anything over 1500 words, we start seeing a red cross. Now, I don't like to deter my clients by saying we can't have more information. It's not going to say you don't get a job, but it's certainly one of the things that we would love a green tick on the following section is I call this scope and scale. What it's actually looking for is if you have applied for a role or if you are applying for a role for a marketing manager and you've never held the role marketing manager before, you've held the role marketing assistant. Instantly the applicant tracking software is going to say you have never held this role before. So all of a sudden it's going to start saying, was that a different title? But you've actually done the role. It's going to look for verbiage, it's going to look for things that sort of identify whether you are a marketing manager. One way around that is to become a marketing manager and ensure that you have those right skills and ensure that you are aiming yourself at the right level, because essentially that's what it's looking for. The final section is ATS templates or ATS compliant templates, should I say? And this is a really, really key thing, it is looking for format, it is looking for bullet points, it is looking for no infographics, no columns, no weird text, no photographs. These are all really, really key things in formulating an ATS compliant template.

[07:10] Paula Grant: Great advice there because we see these beautifully designed resume templates all the time. Beautiful colors, beautiful photos, lots of graphics, but they're not that useful if the ATS is not able to read them. So I think candidates really have to think about whether you are going to be applying for jobs by job boards which are likely to go through applicant tracking systems, or you are sending it to a contact and you're going direct to their email inbox through perhaps a referral network, then perhaps that's something that is less important. But we really need to be careful with these overly designed templates that can be downloaded, don't we?

[07:53] Speaker C: Very much so. Very much so. And it is something that I often talk to clients about because they want their photo on there. They want these cool infographics. There's been for a few years where they've got tables showcasing the percentage of their proficiency in certain skills. Whilst they look great, this is just not the avenue for that. I always suggest to people that they may be able to design something in canva for LinkedIn, but making sure that we're designing something in word or Google Docs are the only ATS compliant templates. Can Photoshop? Not so much.

[08:30] Paula Grant: And would you suggest to clients, does it make any difference whether they are uploading a word doc or a PDF file when they're applying for jobs online?

[08:39] Speaker C: To be honest with you. The applicant tracking software that I use allows you to upload your resume in either word or PDF. However, I always tell my clients use PDF. Two things happen. We ensure that the format absolutely won't change because we've locked it in. It's going to look great once it lands on a recruiter's desk. The second thing is we're ensuring that no one is manipulating or changing that data again because it's locked. If we have an editable word document, while that's great for our clients to be able to make changes, we don't want that landing on somebody else's desk.

[09:09] Paula Grant: As a resume writer, how do you go about keyword optimizing for particular jobs or industries? Can you run us through your process?

[09:20] Speaker C: Yes, my process is the word I use, leah is reverse engineer. I always say to my clients, the first step is to go and reverse engineer the type of role or roles that they are applying for. What I mean by that is I will get my clients to send between one and three job links to the types of roles that they're applying for, and we essentially scan them through the trackers to see what types of words are most commonly coming up. They might be, for example, a contracts administrator, they may be contracts administration. They might be procurement schedule. They might be project management, contract design, a sign off subcontractor, tendering, etcetera. Once I've got that library of words to use, I essentially use that as my thesaurus of the types of words that we're then going to use to create content. So I will then go in and I will start to design content and a story using the words that we know are going to be those keywords that the ATS looks for. Now, one of the key things to note is that not every job ad is going to have the same keywords. And this is obviously something that clients need to understand that whilst we have our library of words and we populate the resume to give people as much exposure and possibility of getting through those, I always ensure that our clients understand how to identify which keywords will be used in an applicant tracking software. And the best way to identify that is where it says what we're looking for or this job will entail or our ideal candidate will have. It's those key hard skills, more often than soft skills that are the skills that they're looking for with most merit. Following that, I will design that, that first draft of regime, and then I will upload it into a applicant tracking software and I will ensure that we have ticked those boxes once upon a time, recruiters used to suggest that if we were scanning over 70% accuracy, that you were listing high or ranking high on people's list to interview. I can't with confidence say that's the case. I have had clients with a 50% resume get interviews and I've had clients with a 90% resume not got interviews. The key thing that we want to do here is give our clients the most chance, or the greatest chance rather to get through those trackers and land on a desk of human eyes. Because a recruiter will quickly identify if they are the right person for a cultural fit, if they've got the right skills, and if they have the skills that are not too high or too low for the position description. Once I've done that, I'll then send the draft out to clients, offer them the opportunity to make changes and take them through why I've used some of those keywords. One of the greatest feedbacks that we have often is where people say, Paul, a great word, but not how I describe myself, or great word, but that's not necessarily an adjective I would use. I take them through the why I've used that because sometimes once we understand that there's madness to the method, they understand that is a word that they have seen come up on numerous job ads. One of the key words that's being used at the moment is curious or inquisitive. Now, not necessarily a word that many people would use to describe themselves, but certainly a word that's in many of the job ads and is then coming off up as a soft skill or a trait in those applicant tracking softwares.

[13:03] Paula Grant: So there is definitely a science to writing resumes these days that takes time and years of experience to perfect. I've seen recommendations on TikTok over the last twelve months about suggesting that job seekers, you know, stuff their resumes with invisible text of keywords in the headers and footers. Is this something that you would recommend?

[13:28] Speaker C: No, this is not something I would recommend. Recruiters are really smart. They're really smart people. And what happens is once our resumes are landing in these ats or in these tracking systems, the keywords are actually highlighted. So if, for example, the footer has accounting, accounting, accounting written in there to try and rank high, all of a sudden the recruiter sees that you have been sneaky. And that's not exactly the best way to start out a relationship. More often than not you'll get binned before you would get a phone call.

[13:58] Paula Grant: And a lot of organizations these days, integrity and honesty is one of their core values. So it's probably not align with those values.

[14:09] Speaker C: The other key thing with that, Leah, is that's not a new practice. It's new to resume writing, but it's something that SEO experts started to do some time ago with websites, and it was to generate top place on SEO on websites. We're not trying to suggest that our clients need to be number one. What we want to say is that their story resonates with them, their story is true to who they are, but also aligns to the science that we're saying that the skills that they've got translate this to the language that this job description is looking for. And that's more often the case. It's about how do we take somebody's background and somebody's story to where they're wanting to go. I will often say it's like goldilocks, we're leaving breadcrumbs to where we want to go rather than just rehashing the experience that we've got. And in doing that, we're far more likely to actually secure an interview rather than is stuffing keywords into the bottom of footers or headers of a job ad. As long as we've got those basic keywords in there that align with the job description, the rest of it's then storytelling.

[15:19] Paula Grant: Paula, I just wanted to talk to you about tailoring resumes, because often, as you know, we work with clients who could potentially apply for different types of roles. So they might be thinking that they might like to do a sales go to market role, a product manager role, or perhaps an operations role. As we know, the keywords in those job ads are going to be quite different. So usually we talk to people about perhaps having three different versions of their resume. What sort of comments could you make around that?

[15:56] Speaker C: What I always do, Leah, first and foremost is understand the why. If we understand the why somebody's interested in their job, often the key skills will copy over. You know, a sales specialist is more often than not about developing solutions that generate revenue and generate results for either the business or the client. A product developer is exactly the same. So sometimes it's about giving people the option for a plug and play resume. And I much rather giving people the control and the education to be able to plug and play their future resume. And what I mean by that is I will develop a resume where I will highlight areas that I know they are going to need to tailor a skill or an example to suit another discipline that they'll be applying for a role. I think education is key. Whilst we can certainly develop numerous versions, I find that most of my clients are able to understand the importance of those keywords, identify how to find those keywords in a job description, and identify how their skills align to the job description after our consultation, and have been able to then tailor things quite successfully. The key thing here is going back to basics. What does the job demand? What are their ideal requirements of the candidate, and how do you ensure that you are that person? By marrying those keywords or those key skills. Often I say it's like the tinder of the professional world and my clients always laugh at me. But essentially that's it. We're saying that we want to have a relationship with someone. It is a relationship between employee and employer, or prospective employee, employer. You want to ensure that you are starting out by saying, I can tick everything on your wish list to want to have a first date with me. And then at interview it's about developing that reporter want to have a continued relationship. The first step is making sure that you're ticking the boxes of the person that you want to have that first date with.

[18:00] Paula Grant: The purpose of the resume is really just getting the interview at the end of the day, isn't it?

[18:04] Speaker C: Absolutely, absolutely.

[18:06] Paula Grant: So we've talked about resume. Obviously these days it's also very important to have a strong online presence, and usually that is with LinkedIn and having a professional, complete and ideally keyword optimized LinkedIn profile. Can you explain to our listeners why it's important as a job seeker to have a keyword optimized LinkedIn profile?

[18:32] Speaker C: Yeah, it's not dissimilar to the resume. Essentially, we're up against a form of ATS, again with LinkedIn. We have a version of ATS built into LinkedIn, where LinkedIn is looking for people with certain skills. That's the first aspect of that. For people that are searching for somebody, maybe an ideal candidate to call in for an interview or to develop a relationship with. LinkedIn works two ways. It's for people searching for potential candidates and it's also for job searches. For job searchers, it's probably much more important because to be seen, there are various things that need to come together. You ideally would love to have an all star rating, and that's where I always strive to get our clients. An all star rating essentially means that you have every piece of the puzzle filled in, from a headshot to cover image to all other areas checked, that you have some key dot points under each of your job roles, your education is filled in your training and courses, etcetera. One of the key things with getting to all star status is also ensuring that we are giving people what they're looking for. So what I always suggest to our clients is, what is it that you want to promote as your personal brand? What do you want people to see when they find you? Is it that you are a creative? Is it that you are a strategist? Is it that you are very results driven and therefore can deliver impact to them? Once we understand that, then we understand what words need to be included. And more often than not, it's the same types of words, same types of phrases, same types of information that are going into the resume. But sometimes it's not. Sometimes people want to think broader or they've got different reasons to be on LinkedIn. One of the other key things with ensuring that we're fully optimized is making sure that we're active. LinkedIn loves when people are active and therefore they promote them more. They sit at the top of pages. To be active, we need to ensure that we've got recommendations that we're posting, that we are reposting, we're engaging, and that's equally as important as actually having a complete LinkedIn. And just being aware of those sorts of things is really important as well. Great point.

[20:50] Paula Grant: I think it's, as you said, it's not just about having that professional profile, it's the engagement. And I can see even going on to LinkedIn with some of my clients, five, six minutes a day is enough to start to really build their visibility, build their brand. It might be commenting on people's posts, liking posts. Going to your notifications tab, I think is a quick and easy way where you can see some updates in your network. So even just a couple of minutes a day can make a big difference with LinkedIn and really thinking about your audience and what you want to be known for and making sure your LinkedIn's future focus is really important.

[21:33] Speaker C: Very much so. You raised two really good points there, Leah. The first one also, being around the audience, a lot of my clients don't actually realize that they have to have decent following or audience to ensure that they can actually engage. I always suggest increasing your engagement or followers by 50 at a time, because if you've only got four people on your LinkedIn, there's not a lot of engagement you can do. And I appreciate that sometimes people don't understand the need to be active on there, but I can get clients through that. The second key thing in terms of optimizing. And this is something I always recommend to clients, is developing a tailored URL. So getting rid of all of those numbers or letters that sit behind the URL and making it something specific to you. And again, as you said, future focused. Whether it is a John Smith strategist, whether it is John Smith Melbourne, people are going to find you a whole lot easier than if it's John Smith 95615 and 100 other numbers after that.

[22:47] Paula Grant: And looks much better on your resume when you've got a shortened URL.

[22:53] Speaker C: It sure does. It absolutely does.

[22:55] Paula Grant: Obviously, photo, really important. I think having a photo that reflects the sort of people you want to work with, good lighting. You know, I'm sure you've, we've both seen some rather ordinary photos in our time, but you know what? Any comments about photos, exactly as you.

[23:13] Speaker C: Say, this is your personal branding. This is the way that you want future employers to see you. You want to show that you're presentable, you want to show that you are professional. But I equally say you don't need to go and spend hundreds of dollars. You know, these days, iPhone cameras are great. Have. Have somebody take it when you're comfortable, because then you're a true reflection of who you are. That, for me, is really key. I think being able to be presentable, professional, but also true to who you are shows that you're going to be a little more relaxed in that environment and people engage with that a little bit more. The other key thing that a lot of people don't understand is the necessity for that cover banner. A lot of people say to me, well, I don't want anything there. I don't know how to put anything there. One of the things that I always do for clients is design one in canva. Even if it's quite simple, having something there that almost reflects somebody, whether it is an office job with a keyboard behind them, or whether it's their name and some of those keywords, whether it's strategist or educational leader or head of planning, it's a quick way for people to identify who you are. And again, another tick on that all star status.

[24:29] Paula Grant: Yeah, I love a good banner. And I've seen particularly some younger clients who are really sort of passionate, whether it's dietitians and they've got some great photos that really represent their brand. And I think it really makes your LinkedIn pop. So, yeah, I'd highly recommend that as well. We obviously also write LinkedIn for business owners and freelancers and people who are using LinkedIn as a platform to attract clients. I'm seeing recently that a lot of people are really just focusing on LinkedIn and not even having a website. Did you have any comments around that?

[25:05] Speaker C: I think you've hit the nail on the head. I think people are starting to condense the way that they reach or engage with their audience. Once upon a time, a lot of people outsourced to people to manage their social media, to manage their website, to manage their e commerce site. A lot of that can be done on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great platform to allow people engaged to post stories, updates, to have links embedded into where they want to direct people to. So I think if you can have it all in one place, and you can also show people that you have a true following, that you are great at what you do by getting those endorsements or recommendations, as LinkedIn calls them, it shows validation of your business and what you really are truly good at.

[25:52] Paula Grant: Yeah, it's a great opportunity for people to build a business, even if they're doing a side hustle, I think, and don't necessarily want to go spend money on websites and branding. You know, there's so much you can do in LinkedIn. You know, you can now create a newsletter and, you know, you can really have an audience just through LinkedIn. Paula, thank you for your great input, your advice. As we can see, there's quite a lot to writing a keyword optimized resume. If you are interested in having us have a look at your resume or LinkedIn, we're very happy to do that for free. So you can contact us via the relaunch me website. And we're very happy to do a bit of a review and give you some feedback to see if there's anywhere we can uplift either your resume or your LinkedIn profile. Or if you don't have the time, you can also work with one of our wonderful writers like Paula to help you create some documents that will help you stand out from the crowd and hopefully beat the bottom.

[26:57] Speaker C: That's it. That's the ultimate goal. I always say to clients, I'm not here to get you the job. I'm here to get you the interview. So we want to get through that bot and then get human eyes reading the resume.

[27:06] Paula Grant: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Paula. Great to have you on the podcast.

[27:11] Speaker C: No, thanks for having me, Leigh. I really appreciate it.

[27:21] Leah Lambart: I hope you enjoyed this episode of relaunch your career. If you did, please subscribe, share with your friends, leave a review, or connect with us on social media. E launchme career consulting. If you have any questions about the episode or the work that we do, then contact us via the website relaunchme.com dot au dot thanks for listening. Have a great day.