So something that I’m researching and seeing. Again, I haven’t heard any, I really haven’t heard anyone being able to take this information and say, oh my gosh, I’m so glad I got this. This is so useful. But these are the things that we are most likely going to be seeing.

Chris Villanueva 00:19
And welcome to the Let’s Eat, Grandma Career Warrior Podcast. My name is Chris Villanueva and I am the founder and CEO of Let’s Eat, Grandma resume service. We’ve helped over 11,000 job seekers with our resume writing packages. We’ve been listed by New York post money.com and Investipedia as a top resume service. Check us out when you get the chance.

Chris Villanueva 00:41
Today we’re going to be talking about something quite interesting. It’s one of the most highly researched topics when it comes to resumes. It’s applicant tracking systems, how do they work? And I revisited this topic again this year because it’s something that can evolve quickly with the time. Some things are going to stay exactly the same and some things are going to change and we should be aware of those changes. Things like ai, things like how recruiters are searching for resumes these days. So let’s kick right into the core of this episode.

Chris Villanueva 01:13
Applicant tracking systems, applicant tracking systems are the way in which the online application system revolves. Essentially, if you are sending your resume out to a company online, nine times out of 10, in fact, I’d probably say 9.5 times out of 10, it is going to be searched, organized, parsed by an applicant tracking system.

Chris Villanueva 01:36
We’re going to cover everything that you need to know about applicant tracking systems as well as how things are changing in 2025, and I want to make sure that you have some actionable things that you can take away from this episode, such as how to get your resume prepped and really organized in such a way in which the applicant tracking systems can pick up on your documents.

Chris Villanueva 01:58
Alright, so I just want to first of all acknowledge how dumb this title is. It says, what does the a TS really want? First of all, it’s not the robots that we’re really looking to appeal to here. It’s the humans. It’s the actual busy emotional, sometimes tired, sometimes sleep deprived hiring managers and recruiters who are really going to be searching for candidates. They have a really busy, busy life, and so I feel for job seekers just as much as I feel for the people who are looking to source talent for their organizations.

Chris Villanueva  02:34
So what is an applicant tracking system? Let’s start there. It is essentially computer software that a hiring manager or somebody with a similar role can use to process applicants. Most companies today, including over 97% of Fortune 500 companies rely on using an applicant tracking system. So again, this is going to be huge if you’re sending your resume online, especially if you’re applying for companies that are competitive. Now imagine this, say you are looking to check out restaurants in a brand new city. Your friend says, oh my gosh, welcome to Portland. It’s the best city in the world for food. And I’m like, man, I love food.

Chris Villanueva 03:17
So let’s see what this guy has to offer. He says, okay, I’m going to drop you a hundred recommendations. These are a hundred of my favorite restaurants in Portland. The first thing you might think is, oh my gosh, that’s way too much. I just wanted for you to figure this stuff out for me and tell me what the best restaurants I should check are today. So you tell them three very specific things. You say, I want Vietnamese, I want within five miles of where I’m at right now, and I also want it to have a cool ambience on the inside. So your friend says, ah, okay, I get you. Let me pick five restaurants from that list of recommendations and push it to you so that it is right in front of your face.

Chris Villanueva 04:03
I’m giving you some, I should say, empathy, some analogy here to really drive home the fact that hiring managers go through the same exact thing. They have sometimes hundreds of different applicants that they need to sort through people who have applied and they need some sort of way to pick the ones that are going to be the best match for the job description.

Chris Villanueva 04:25
So it’s more than just a sorting tool. It’s also a way for these hiring managers to track and actually reach out to people who apply. So this is why sometimes we complain that I wasn’t able to hear back from this company. Well, most of the time somebody’s not even going to be looking at your resume and these applicant tracking systems may or may not have automations set in place that are basically set up to reject applicants and let you know that you didn’t get past the initial stages here.

Chris Villanueva 04:58
So does everything here, how do applicant tracking systems work? And this is really where I want you to listen, especially if you think you know what you know already. Well, maybe you will unlock some insights here that could eventually get you noticed applicant tracking systems work first by giving you knockout questions. These are the so-called knockout questions, but at the end of the day, there are additional questions that go beyond your resume.

Chris Villanueva 05:24
Things such as are you willing to work? Do you have X amount of years of experience and the one that I probably hate the most, what salary are you expecting for this position? Now, after those knockout questions, the applicant tracking systems will look at your resume and make sure that you have the appropriate keywords and it’s going to go beyond keywords. I’ll touch upon that and how things are changing now, but still primarily keywords are going to be the number one thing that the ATS is going to be scanning and looking for within your, there are hundreds of different types of applicant tracking systems. There’s telio Bullhorn, there is Workday LinkedIn if you want to count that as an a TS as well because you can search and filter out candidates that way through profiles. But there are so many different algorithms and ways for people to sort through candidates.

Chris Villanueva 06:15
So imagine you are searching for candidates who have 120 applications lined up. You can first of all filter to make sure that you have got those knockout questions out of the way and you’re filtering out people who didn’t answer the way you want them to. And after that, you can type and search for keywords that are required, optional and keywords that can even exclude the resumes from being sorted to the top. Yes, this is something that I didn’t even realize. It’s something that escaped my mind, but you can actually as a hiring manager type in a keyword that you don’t want to apply into a resume.

Chris Villanueva 06:57
Again, not every a TS is the same way, but certain ones do have this feature. Okay, let’s talk about 2025 how things are changing. We’ve seen AI become more and more of something that hiring managers are using, and I would just simplify that even more that applicant tracking systems are integrating within their software to conduct better searches.

Chris Villanueva 07:21
So let’s go back to the friend example of friend dumping a hundred different restaurants for you to check out. You said you wanted Vietnamese, you said you wanted within a five mile radius. Okay, those are two pretty easy things to filter out through a keyword. However, good ambience can mean a lot of different things, and so AI could actually pull other things and make logical conclusions based off of things like the professional experience and education and anything else that is in the document. Make logical conclusions and filter and sort out based on a search. So if you want good ambience, that’s not something that’s very easy to search for. Okay, good ambience, maybe it’s going to pull from the reviews, but at the end of the day, AI is going to make the search for candidates even better because they’re able to basically build smarter, make smarter decisions when it comes to how these applications are sorted.

Chris Villanueva 08:22
There’s also some talk, and again, one of those controversial things, but I think it’s worth mentioning, but also talk about AI making it better in terms of diversity and making sure that there’s less human bias when it comes to filtering out a resume based off of sex or race, et cetera, et cetera. We’ll see how that turns out because all of this is so new, but the way I see this changing is that we are going to have smarter searches when it comes to resumes. The other thing that we might see with some of these AI based changes are we may start to see real time feedback for the resumes that we sent in. So for example, the AI might be able to reject our applications and we might see, okay, this is why we weren’t able to make the cut for the initial stage here.

Chris Villanueva 09:14
This something that I’m researching and seeing. Again, I really haven’t heard anyone being able to take this information and say, oh my gosh, I’m so glad I got this. This is so useful. But these are the things that we are most likely going to be seeing. So let’s go to the advice for job seekers, how to get your resume noticed and how to essentially get it picked up by applicant tracking systems. Again, if you’re not getting notice now, keep trying and keep tweaking your resume.

Chris Villanueva 09:41
The first principle that I have to cover my bases with here is to make sure to match the job postings as much as possible. Listen, I’ve said it time and time again. A resume is an adaptable document. It’s something that is beautiful because it is a marketing piece at the end of the day and something that you can really use as a weapon to match job postings here and to get noticed.

Chris Villanueva 10:05
So if you really care about a company, make sure that you are tailoring those keywords as much as possible to the job postings. I say focus on hard skills as much as possible. Soft skills, yes, they are important, but unless you can quantify those or back them up with results, it’s not going to do much for you. I would really focus on the hard skills and the position titles that you are going to be matching here.

Chris Villanueva 10:31
The other thing that was eye-opening for me is that there are exclusions, there are keyword exclusions that can be made, which essentially validates what I’ve been saying for years now and that keyword stuffing does not work. I’ll repeat that again. Keyword stuffing does not work because you are watering down your resumes and you are making it less targeted, which means you’re not going to get picked up by applicant tracking systems.

Chris Villanueva 10:57
So go deep not wide When it comes to your resume, I’ll give you an example of that. Let’s say you are applying for sales manager positions here, but you have, let’s say marketing experience. You have account executive experience and you have UX design experience and you think, well, maybe I can include all of these different things and all of these different keywords, but that will actually work against you because you water down the things that are going to really make a difference for you, and by including those keywords, you may be including some keyword exclusions that are going to get your resume essentially not seen.

Chris Villanueva 11:40
So go deep, not wide. An example of that is maybe focusing on five to 10 keywords instead of 20 to 30 keywords on your document. Trust me, this is going to help. Additionally, if you have things that you can repeat in different ways in your document that you know are going to be requirement, let’s say for example JavaScript, you may want to repeat that throughout the resume because that could end up increasing your resume score as well.

Chris Villanueva 12:09
Again, that’s a different way of integrating keywords. It’s going deep and not wide, so have multiple resumes. That is the next natural tip that I’ll give you. So if you are applying for multiple positions and even having little nuances between each job posting that you’re going to be applying for, you can tweak your resume to make sure that you were going forth and coming across as relevant. That’s going to be really important. Lastly, and of course, find ways not just to apply online. Go through your network of friends, go through warm connections. This is something that I strongly believe in to find ways for you to offer value and to essentially keep moving your career forward.

Chris Villanueva 12:54
So try new things. If you’re not getting the results that you want in your job search, then come up with new iterations of your resume. Don’t give up ever because eventually you are going to get the success that you deserve here. I’ve heard of stories before in which people have applied to the same company after waiting a few months and finally moving on to the interview stage. They weren’t noticed before, but this was the time that they kept trying and tweak the resume just a little bit to end up getting there. So don’t give up. That’s my biggest message to you. That’s a really big theme of this podcast and something that I really don’t want you to forget here. You have an amazing life ahead of you, and I know you are going to get exactly what you want with some persistence and a little bit of brain power.

Chris Villanueva 13:41
So check out, Let’s Eat, Grandma, we are here for you as a resource. I genuinely mean that and I can’t wait to see you next time. I’ve been slacking on the guest episodes, but I can tell you we have three amazing surprise guests coming up soon in the next couple of months here. So you’re going to want to make sure that you are subscribed and staying tuned to this podcast. All right, Career Warriors. I’ll see you next time!

Chris Villanueva 14:03
Career Warrior Podcast. And before you go, remember, if you’re not seeing the results you want in your job search, our highly trained team of professional resume writers here at, Let’s Eat, Grandma can help head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ to get a free resume critique and $70 off any one of our resume writing packages. We talk all the time on the show about the importance of being targeted in your job search and with our unique writing process and focus on individual attention, you’ll get a resume cover letter and LinkedIn profile that are highly customized and tailored to your goals to help you get hired faster. Again, head on over to letseatgrandma.com/podcast/ Thanks, and I’ll see you next time.