Today, the first person to look at a job seeker’s application is usually not the average person.
According to 2019 data, 3 out of 4 resumes are invisible to the human eye. And in January, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission estimated that 83% of all employers, including 99% of Fortune 500 companies, use automation to filter job applicants.
As a result, some experts have dubbed it a “resume black hole,” a void where certain resumes are automatically filtered before they reach a real person’s desk.
Certainly, artificial intelligence did not create a resume black hole. Even if the hiring process was fully managed by humans, there were flaws in the system that allowed some applications to slip through.
“Black holes existed before technology,” says Frida Polli, chief data science officer at recruiting platform Harver. “Resume black holes often have to do with the fact that companies, frankly, ignore certain candidate pools. And that’s been true for a long time.”
She said Fortune 500 companies have always screened candidates without specific qualifications to expedite the selection process, but in today’s tight labor market, employers are limiting hiring. He points out that they are trying to expand rather than shrink.
Yet black holes still reside in the recruitment process, which today is automated by artificial intelligence algorithms.
here are three Experts witness the mistakes job seekers tend to make, hiding resumes in a lost AI world.
You might be tempted to experiment with the design to separate your resume from the pack.
This strategy may certainly work for human application readers, but for AI, non-standard formats are only confusing and usually a fast track to a pile of rejection.
“When other systems try to transcribe and annotate these résumés, they often stumble over something as simple as a blue background and become unreadable,” said a collaboration with recruitment analytics firm Datapeople. Founder Amit Bhatia says:
Of course, the resume template, above all, does not accurately reflect the candidate’s qualifications. But according to TopResume’s career expert Amanda Augustin, “format really matters” thanks to the AI screening system.
To AI prove your resume format, Augustin advises:
- Avoid photos: Resume skimming algorithms are usually unable to interpret visual images. Stick to words and punctuation marks in your resume to ensure AI reviewers can read your document.
- Be careful with hyperlinks: Augustin said the AI may clip hyperlinked phrases, which can result in incomplete sentences. If you want to reference past digital work in your resume, make sure the corresponding hyperlinks are separated from the text. For example, you can put a hyperlink in parentheses at the end of a sentence.
- Do not customize: Custom fonts and symbols are red flags for AI, and you may not have your favorite font in your system. Augustin suggests using default fonts commonly found in platforms such as Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
- Be consistent: Use the same format for the title, date, and description. The heart of the AI system is the pattern detector. Therefore, if you use a particular font, font size, or indentation for one job description, make sure that you use the same style for the rest of your job descriptions. Otherwise, you run the risk of the AI getting confused and ignoring your resume as it strays from that pattern.
Sending a message to ChatGPT may feel like there is a real person on the other end. In fact, generative AI platforms are sometimes used like online therapists.
Ultimately, however, AI isn’t human, so it can’t always understand subtext like real humans do.
This is especially true in recruiting, as experts say most of the AI used to vette candidates, at least for now, is more rudimentary than more advanced GPT technology. . In other words, you should leave nothing between the lines in your resume.
“Being clear about your skills and responsibilities can also help when the algorithms on the other side are not as smart as human thinking to connect,” Bhatia said.
Ultimately, the AI scanner will try to match job description keywords to resumes. To maximize your chances of winning the bot, choose the most important job requirements listed and use them exactly on your resume.
For example, engineers with diverse programming backgrounds may find it obvious to prospective employers that they have JavaScript experience. However, Bhatia recommends explicitly writing “JavaScript” as a skill so the AI doesn’t miss it and accidentally disqualify it.
