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How to Outsmart the Robots Reading Your Resume

A poster about meeting the robots.

When you’re crafting your resume, it’s easy to feel discouraged. Not because you don’t know how to express yourself or because you’re exhausted after sending what feels like your 1,000th resume. Instead, you’re not sure if your resume will ever make it past the robots—also known as the applicant tracking system (ATS)—that many organizations use to screen applicants. It’s easy to appeal to a human, but what on earth can you say to a machine?

That’s why we were excited to see this infographic from Hire Right (h/t The Daily Muse). In addition to explaining how applicant tracking systems work, they offer tips on how to make sure your resume gets past the robots. Some of their tips mirror common resume-writing advice: use the language of the job description, don’t use abbreviations or fancy fonts. Other tips are quite new: a longer resume might actually help you get past an ATS and don’t upload a PDF.

Check out the infographic below. Anything surprising to you?

An infographic.

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