Whether you like it or not we live in the 21st Century. This means that when you apply to a vacancy the first selection will most likely be made by a piece of software and not a human reader. The software works like a google search, the recruiter inputs certain variables, such as a skill, and the software will show him/her the most relevant CVs for that particular search.
10 years ago, applicants used to “keyword stuff” their CV which meant placing a large amount of keywords, using a very small font and white text, into the footer to fool the software and make them appear more relevant.
As with all technology, these pieces of software have evolved. They are no longer fooled by keyword stuffing as this created too many false searches for the recruiter. They now analyse the complete document as a human reader would, looking for natural and unnatural placement of keywords. Based on these algorithms peoples dreams live or die.
At We Write CVs, we analyse every CV produced through an ATS to ensure Clients CVs are shown in all appropriate searches and changes are made to maximise the documents efficiency. This is particularly important when you are submitting your CV to a job site that has a CV database.
If your CV has a poor ATS performance, then you will never be found in any relevant searches on job sites. With sites such as Indeed with 100 million CVs or CV-Library with over 15 million CVs its essential that you CV is keyword optimised before submittal to sites such as these.