Opinion
3 Reasons to Take Jobscan with a Grain of Salt
ATS is actually making it harder for job seekers to apply to the right job and for managers to hire the right people
In mid-2013, I bumped into someone I haven’t ran into in a while.
He had just quit a coveted role as a software developer for a yet-to-be named startup. When asked what the startup did, he didn’t want to get too specific by the product was supposed to help job applicants with the whole complicated job-hunting process.
That startup turned out to be Jobscan.
As the startup grew more prominent during my excruciating search in the corporate world, I decided to give Jobcsan a try.
Now, keep in mind, my resume at the time was already getting me an average of one interview every two weeks or so. For me, the problem has never been my resume; it has always been the interview itself.
Even so, it wouldn’t hurt to see what the keyword-matching tool was all about. If Jobscan were to make the process more pleasant while increasing my probability of getting interviews at my targeted companies, then it would be a win-win for me and the hiring entity.
It didn’t turn out that way at all.
In fact, Jobscan actually made the process more difficult. Here’s why.
Keyword Traps
Copy-and-Pasting
I was waiting for my turn to talk to the recruiter from a local Fortune 500 at a packed career fair.
I stepped up to the man, shook his hand, and introduced myself.
As I presented my non-Jobscan tailored resume and dived into my 30-second elevator pitch, he voluntarily elaborated on some insider info on his company’s interview process.
His company quit using ATS!
WHAT?!
This was a company with over 150,000 employees worldwide. Every opening would received hundreds of submissions. So to hear that it no longer used ATS was a complete shocker.
He went on to explain that it was because his team found countless applicants copy-and-pasting the job descriptions into their resumes nearly word-for-word.
So now, every resume passes through actual human eyes.
When we replace humans with computers for a subjective task such as reviewing resumes, we make computers set the benchmark. And to beat that benchmark, what’s easier and faster than copying the job description and pasting it into the resume?!
Of course, anyone who has a single ounce of care would avoid doing this and disqualifying him or herself. But when one is advised to submit within a day or two of the posted date, this is very tempting.
Three vs. One
If we are honorable to not copy-and-paste, then we must put in the effort to tailor our resumes every time.
Yet that can be wasted efforts as well.
For those of you who don’t know, Jobscan — and very likely ATS — identifies verbs in different tenses as separate keywords.
For example, if a job description includes “develop”, “develops”, and “developing”, the scanner will view that as three separate keywords even though their base definition is the same.
So it is very possible that Jobscan won’t count “developed” in your resume if the job description doesn’t have that verb in past tense.
So when a number of my clients — especially the overachievers — tells me they would spend an average of three hours tailoring and restructuring their resumes to a specific job description so that they could get a high matching percentage, I’m not surprised.
I have done it myself, trying to rewrite bullet points in my own words to include every single keyword Jobscan has identified and ensuring all the grammar is correct.
But within that same amount of time, we could have submitted to three, four, even five positions with our master resumes and take our chances.
This kink is supposed to catch the best candidates. In actuality, it’s highly likely to toss the truly qualified to the curb, simply because of a verb technicality.
Gender Unfriendly
Some of you may be wondering, “Wait. Why invest so much effort tailoring? Surely, when you said, ‘high matching percentage’, it can’t be that high!”
As Jobscan — and numerous coaches — would have it, it’s 80%!
That’s right. The advice is to only submit your resume to a job when you can match 80% of the keywords.
Now, here’s the thing.
Whenever this topic surfaces during my dinner parties, everyone — male and female — agrees to this gender difference.
When a woman reads a job description and sees ten bullet points under requirements, she would make sure that she at least qualify for eight of them before submitting.
A man reads the same ten bullets and would submit when he qualifies for four or five of them and takes his chances. That’s 50%!
Come on, ladies! We are losing opportunities!
Advising people to reach 80% matching negatively stimulates two of women’s most self-conscious inner traits: worry and perfectionism.
And we often forget that the bottom quarter of the requirements list likely entails frivolous points.
The More Elegant Method of Using Jobscan (If You Must)
After using the keyword-matching tool a handful of times during my own job-search journey, I have concluded that Jobscan is counterproductive. At least for me.
I would still tailor my resume to a specific job, but instead of laboring over it for nearly four hours, I could now do so in half an hour…without Jobscan.
How, you might ask?
Ninety percent of the solution lies in letting go and taking my chances.
Like Teddy Roosevelt and Brene Brown would say, you have to be in the arena to compete for that opportunity.
And I am not going to let some 80% benchmark take me out of the competition.
Plus, if I were the recruiter or hiring manager, shouldn’t I be wary if I noticed someone’s resume matches the job description by that much?
What about the last 10% of the solution?
This can be done with or without Jobscan:
- Identify 3–5 job descriptions that have potential.
- Highlight the common keywords in most of these descriptions as well as any industry or departmental jargon.
- Pepper the master resume with as many of these words as possible.
By doing this on the master, half the battle is already won on the tailored resume. And no one says all the words have to be used anyway.
I would shoot for 50%. Not 80%.
Because I am not sure I trust a company that hires people strictly by some keyword algorithm.
Final Thought
So use Jobscan if you really must, but it’s not the holy grail.
Tailoring your resume according to inflated rules will not guarantee you an interview.
What it might do is increase the chances.
And I rather have at least my foot in the arena than rule myself out of it.
How about you?
If you like to receive more tips on how to improve your resume, you can get them at www.sunbreakresumes.com or you can follow me on my LinkedIn business page. Thank you.
