How do I get past applicant tracking systems?

Question

Efri Dereje · Accepted Answer

Honestly, people over-optimise for this and it's mostly a distraction.

Yes, keep the formatting simple. Real text, not a graphic. Standard headings. Use the actual words from the job description where they're true, because that's what gets matched.

But that's about ten minutes of work, and then you're done. Beating the system just gets you into a pile of six hundred that a human then skims for eight seconds. You've won the wrong race.

The real answer is to go around it entirely. A referral doesn't get filtered. A direct message to the hiring manager doesn't get filtered. Someone inside forwarding your name doesn't get filtered.

That's why the hundred-applications problem happens. Not because people are failing the filter. Because passing it doesn't do much.

Spend ten minutes making the CV parseable. Spend the rest of your time finding one human at each company.