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Weekly Newsletter Vol. 85 - April 16, 2025

Generating your Lead Story…

Is Your Resume Getting Ghosted? Here’s Why (and How to Fix It)

Let’s have a quick heart-to-heart about resumes and something called the Applicant Tracking System—or ATS, as it’s usually called. Sounds techy and complicated, right? It’s really not.

There’s a lot of noise out there about how your resume needs to be "ATS-optimized" or else it gets sent into a digital black hole, never to be seen again. And sure, some folks are making serious bank selling fancy templates or resume scans with promises to “beat the system.”

Let’s cut through all that.

Here's the real deal: An ATS is basically a digital sorting tool companies use to help manage the flood of resumes they get. It’s not out to get you. It's just trying to keep up with the chaos.

But here’s the kicker: Most of the resumes that get tossed but it’s not because of formatting. It’s because of knockout questions like: “Do you require visa sponsorship?” If the answer is “yes” and the company doesn’t offer it—you’re out. No fancy resume would’ve changed that.

So before you panic about formats and fonts, take a deep breath. You're likely closer than you think to having a solid, ATS-friendly resume. Let me break it down:

Your Resume Needs to Be Readable… By a Robot and a Real Human. Here’s how to make sure both can follow along:

• Keep it clean. Skip logos, photos, fancy icons, and tables. These might look cool to you but confuse the tech reading it.

• Stick to standard formats. Use Word (.docx) or a PDF saved directly from Word or Google Docs (not scanned). That way, your resume stays readable.

• Avoid hiding info in headers/footers. Put your name, phone number, email, and LinkedIn right at the top, in the main body.

• Use normal fonts and bullets. Fonts like Arial, Calibri, or Georgia = great. Bullet points like • or ■ = also great. No need to get creative here.

• Be consistent. If you’re using dates like “August 2023 – Present,” do that for all your jobs. The system reads dates to calculate your experience.

But Don’t Just Write for the Machine... A lot of people make the mistake of jamming their resume full of keywords hoping to “hack” the system.

Here’s the truth: yes, keywords help. But context wins.

Eg. Saying “Project Management” 10 times doesn’t hit as hard as:

“Led 5 cross-functional project teams to deliver $2.5M in revenue within 6 months.”

Recruiters aren’t looking for robots. They’re looking for results. Make sure your resume tells a clear story of what you’ve done—not just what tools you’ve touched.

Quick Myth-Busting: Let’s kill some common resume myths once and for all:

• “You need a paid ATS-friendly template.” Nah. Google Docs or Word works fine. Just keep it simple.

• “Formatting like bold or bullet points breaks ATS.” Most modern ATS tools can handle bold text and basic bullets. Just avoid columns, images, and headers.

• “You must use one ‘magic’ font.” Nope. Just avoid script or decorative fonts. Stick with the classics.

• “PDFs always get rejected.” Only if they’re image-based (like a scanned doc). Save it as a text-based PDF and you’re golden.

Want to Test Your Resume Against an ATS for Free? Here’s a simple AI prompt you can use to test your resume without spending a dime:

Prompt: “Act as an ATS system and evaluate the following resume against this job description. Identify how well the resume matches and suggest improvements. [Insert job description]. [Insert resume].”

Just paste that into ChatGPT (or any AI tool you trust), and it’ll give you a basic analysis of keyword match, clarity, and fit.

Getting through the ATS is the first step. But your real audience? The hiring manager reading your story. So yes, get the formatting right, but more importantly—make sure your resume sounds like you. Show off your wins. Keep it human.

You can’t make this stuff up

_{(*Disclaimer: these are real experiences provided by RME's community of job seekers and hiring managers)}

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