OPINION: Make your resume nice for a robot

The other day, I decided to apply to some internships. With career fairs coming up, I had just spent an hour revamping all the tiny little details of my resume, and I was excited to put it to use. Upon visiting the first application site, I was asked to upload a resume. Only my resume wasn’t being taken because they wanted to read it; it was being taken so that a computer program could pick out bits and pieces from the resume and add them to the online application form. 

Of course, this program did an awful job, confusing work experience with work location. I had to go through the entire application and fill it out myself. Other sites didn’t even have a program to convert resumes to applications. In the end, I wondered why I even had a resume in the first place if every job I applied to made me regurgitate the same information.

It was exhausting knowing that I had a Microsoft word document with all the answers an employer could ask for, if only they — or even just their programs — could read it. As I sat there at my computer, utterly defeated, it occurred to me that perhaps I was going about this all wrong. Maybe instead of making a resume look nice for a human, a student’s resume should look nice for the robot that’s actually going to be reading it.

So I did some research and found out why this entire process is such a pain for applicants everywhere and what can be done about it.

Simply put, companies can receive absurd amounts of applications just for one position. If they spent even a fraction of the time I spend on organizing my resume in order to read and consider it, they’d be spending significant time and money looking at the majority of candidates who, to put it lightly, don’t have a chance. In order to save time, hirers use programs called applicant tracking systems (ATSs) in order to rank resumes for those looking to hire.

These programs require inputs like resumes and applications. The problem is that often, a good candidate can have a non-ATS-friendly resume. Take for example the hundreds of resume templates available online; with so many to choose from, a program struggles to interpret them all. Thus, some companies prefer it if applicants fill out an online application with all the same information as a resume, just in a standard, organized manner.

This is fine for a company looking to hire, but it sucks for students looking to be hired. As it stands, this forces students into predicaments like mine, where they must fill out application after application, all looking the same, all asking the same questions.

To combat this, companies might work together and decide on standard ATS software. But let’s be real, that’s never going to happen. Priorities for one company’s ideal applicant are different from another, and the logistics and communication required to even get to that point aren’t feasible. After all, the current system filters out all but those who are very, very determined.

Instead, the burden falls onto students, universities and applicants as a whole. To begin, students need a little reality check. The beautiful, unique resume you’ve worked so hard on is only valuable to the people you show it to at a career fair. Students need to keep their resumes focused on the facts and keep the pretty one as an attachment.

The second thing students need is a standard, ATS-friendly resume format. If resumes can be simplified into a few standard formats, programs will be able to read them easier. Currently, resources like ePack are a step in the right direction, but they often fall short of the fully automated application system that students need.

At NC State, advisers often give advice on resume formatting. If they all encouraged one ATS-friendly template, students would only need to adopt it, which really is a lot easier than what we do now.

Ideally, this practice could even be adopted by the entire UNC System. Companies could still use the software they prefer to specify their unique interests, and students wouldn’t have to worry about filling out rigorous applications for each and every opening. In the end, both students and companies would benefit, and it could all start at NC State.