We got “under the hood” on one of the leading applicant tracking systems. Here’s what you need to know.

An applicant tracking system, or ATS, is the software recruiters rely on every day to manage job listings and process incoming applications. 

As a job seeker, you’ve likely heard about ATS as an obstacle to landing a job interview. If so, you’ve also been exposed to outdated, inaccurate, or contradictory advice about how to deal with them.

That’s why Briefcase Coach Sarah Johnston sat down with Zoho representatives Pradyumn and Selva to get the inside scoop on how ZohoRecruit ATS has evolved since it first launched 15 years ago and what that can tell us about how job seekers should optimize their resumes in 2024.

But first, some background. How did we get here?

When You are One of “Too Many Resumes”

Back in 2009, an average of 700,000 Americans per month were losing their jobs to the Great Recession. It was the first job market any of them had entered since high-speed internet overtook dial-up. CareerBuilder was the top job website of the day. They even had a memorable Super Bowl ad that year.

Job seekers took to it and got busy applying. 

Things just didn’t go as planned.

As Lauren Weber recalled in the Wall Street Journal back in 2012, “Technology was supposed to revolutionize the courtship dance between employers and prospective hires, matching the right candidate with the right job in just a few clicks. Instead, Web-based job-hunting tools have left human-resources departments with too many resumes and have given job seekers the sense that applying online is a waste of their time.”

In other words, the easier it is for you to find and apply for a job, the more competition you face. A great conundrum!

“WEB-BASED JOB HUNTING TOOLS HAVE LEFT HUMAN RESOURCES DEPARTMENTS  WITH TOO MANY RESUMES.”

LAUREN WEBER, WALL STREET JOURNAL, 2012

Applicants faced overwhelming competition and impossible odds. Recruiters had to work harder and faster to locate top candidates in the crush of applicants. 

No one was having a good time.

The ATS software recruiters used during the recession was antiquated and ill equipped for so many applicants. Career professionals nicknamed ATS “the resume black hole,” somewhere your resume goes never to be seen again. Many advised job seekers to sidestep online applications and ATS altogether by making direct contact with the recruiter or hiring manager instead.

Zoho Recruit ATS Won’t Stop Ranking Your Resume

Once the economy rebounded, tech companies and startups raced to fix the problem with a new generation of ATS. 

The “holy grail” solution, Weber wrote in 2012, was “software that can read resumes intelligently, flagging a handful of truly promising candidates to a recruiter.” 

Tech companies never expected employers to get any fewer resumes in the future. Their solution to the “too many resumes” problem was to limit the number of resumes a human recruiter had to actually look at. 

“You can see from that amount of money why people are pursuing this magical algorithm,” one analyst told Weber.

Scoring, ranking, and screening algorithms have become commonplace in ATS in the years since, but none have magically revolutionized recruiting just yet.

“A lot of people talk about ‘scoring’ applications,” wrote tech recruiter Kristen Fife on LinkedIn of ATS in general. “This is a function that has been around for years. All this function does is compare keywords between a resume and a job description. Every time I have actually taken a look at the [results] they were ridiculously inaccurate. Most [corporate recruiters] tend to ignore this feature.”

While many are skeptical that this technology will ever work as intended, ATS developers still have massive incentive to advance the technology until it does. After all, employers are receiving “more than double the number of candidates per job” since the introduction of ChatGPT and auto-apply services, according to a new report by Financial Times. 

“We’re definitely seeing higher volume and lower quality, which means it is harder to sift through,” one executive told FT.

Zoho has been chasing this opportunity from the beginning, launching Zoho Recruit all the way back in November 2009. It included their first attempt at “initial filtering and resume screening more quickly without weeding out the qualified candidates.” 

“IT WILL SHOW A LIST OF MATCHING CANDIDATES RANKED BASED ON THEIR MATCH SCORE.“

PRADYUMN KARTHI, ZOHO

Zoho Recruit has had many major updates in the years since. Here’s what we learned from Sarah’s conversation with Zoho’s Pradyumn and Selva about Zoho Recruit’s own magic algorithm and how to create a resume that it could love.

Resume Keyword “Match Scores” Really Do Matter

“What we do is a two-layer keyword match,” Pradyumn told Sarah. “Every job opening and candidate have text fields with keywords of skills and required skills for jobs. The first level is matching these two.”

To make a feature like this work, an ATS like Zoho Recruit has to parse the text of your uploaded resume. In simple terms, that means it opened up your resume, registered all the words on it, then used a series of rules to sort those words and phrases into categories like your name, past companies, and skills-based keywords.

“INCLUDE KEYWORDS AND DESCRIBE THEM REALLY CAREFULLY.”

PRADYUMN KARTHI, ZOHO

Parsing is what enables your resume to come up as a match when a recruiter runs a search in their ATS. In some ATS, your keywords also contribute to a match score or ranking based on the number and frequency of keyword matches with the original job description.

The accuracy of any given ATS’s match results can vary wildly based on things like the parsing accuracy, depth of the keyword database, and intricacies of the algorithm. “We have a database of over 40,000-plus skills that’s given to us from the parser and we expand on that based on industry practices,” explained Pradyumn. 

According to Zoho marketing materials, their feature allows a recruiter to filter and “shortlist candidates from a bulk upload of resumes by finding and matching their skill sets with your job’s requirements.”

What this means is that with a click of a button, “it will show a list of matching candidates and those candidates are ranked based on their match score,” said Pradyumn.

The mere existence of this type of ATS feature helped popularize the resume writing technique of keyword matching. Keyword matching is simple in theory:

• Step 1: Analyze the job listing for keywords. For an ATS match calculation, keywords are likely hard skills that can be developed in a professional setting. Think “cold calling” or “Adobe Photoshop” rather than “self-starter” or “adaptable.” Write them down.
• Step 2: Review your resume for natural opportunities to add those keywords. Go through it one keyword at a time. Add them as details to your resume’s existing bullet points or write additional lines. Only add skills/keywords you actually possess and are comfortable demonstrating. 

“The initial match score might prevent you [from getting a callback], so keywords are always important,” said Pradyumn. “Include keywords and describe them really carefully.”

It doesn’t matter if you do it manually or get help from a web tool like ResumeWorded, Rezi, Teal, or my former employer Jobscan. It doesn’t matter if the recruiter still manually reviews applications or leans on resume match scoring tech; this technique is a winner because it makes tailoring your resume for each new job application very doable. Tailoring your resume connects the dots for a recruiter, linking your past to their needs and allowing them to see you as the ideal solution to their problem.

Keyword Matching is Wasted Without Context

“The second level is parsing the candidate’s resume and looking at the keywords they’ve included and how they’ve defined or described their keywords,” Pradyumn explained to Sarah. 

When your resume matches for a query in Zoho Recruit, the recruiter is shown a snippet of text that includes the matched keyword as well as the words around it. 

A recruiter running queries for an open accounting position might search for keywords like reconciliation or forecasting. Using a real accountant’s unoptimized resume as an example, the recruiter would likely see snippets that look something like this:

• “…in the accounting, auditing, and reconciliation of the electronic toll collection operations…”
• “Forecasted and defined fiscal needs and commitments of the division…”
• “…and program funds; executed reconciliations; and identified factors impacting expenditure trends…”
• “…reporting and variance analysis, forecasting and budgeting, and external…”

“Always keep in mind that you have to describe what you did in that specific role really carefully [when using] industry standard keywords,” advised Pradyumn.

With that in mind, Sarah stresses the need to craft high impact bullet statements around your resume keywords, writing that in order “to prove you are the best candidate, all statements in your resume need to show value, and they need to be measurable.”

Adding accomplishments and measurable results to your resume is one of the best ways to stand out in general because it provides rare context and evidence to the recruiter. It’s a clear leg up over other candidates who have similar skills and experiences but no evidence of their effectiveness.

Our accountant can attract positive attention from resume skimmers and searchers alike by connecting her keywords to measurable results and impacts. For example, her high impact bullet statements could look something like this:

• “Developed a detailed 3-year financial forecasting model, increasing budget planning precision by 30% and supporting strategic…”
• “Spearheaded the implementation of a new forecasting system that improved revenue projections by 20%…”
• “Created advanced forecasting tools which reduced budget variance by 15% and optimized financial resource management…”

A great resume contextualizes your work and career. Add depth to your resume by surrounding your keywords with context words that describe things like your proficiency level, measurable impacts, professional specialty, or technological environment.

Resume Content is More Important than Formatting and Length

Like many ATS, Zoho Recruit automatically parses incoming resumes. In this case, “parsing” is when the software automatically extracts text info from a resume and reorganizes it into a uniform applicant profile and searchable database entry.

“THE FORMAT WILL NEVER GIVE YOU AN EDGE OVER OTHER PEOPLE [IN ATS].“

PRADYUMN KARTHI, ZOHO

ATS have historically done a lousy job at accurately parsing resumes, leading recruiters I know to view the original attached resume for most applicants regardless of what’s parsed. However, Pradyumn suggested that recruiters using Zoho Recruit don’t need to view your resume at all. “They just create a record here and go by their form.”

Because of this, optimizing your resume content for the ATS match score and search results is more important than creating a stylish resume. Or as Pradyumn put it, “Beautification is important, but the format will never give you an edge over other people.”

Pradyumn is willing to bet that automation and AI will make the concept of a one-page resume moot. 

“People used to worry, ‘Oh, are they going to read the entire thing?’” he said of two-plus-page resumes. “But no, no, no. Everything’s automated [for the recruiter]. So put everything you can into the resume so you have a better chance.”

Be thorough when tailoring your work history for each job application. “Everything you can” in this case includes targeted resume skills and keywords, specific context that validates your experience level with each skill, and measurable results or impressive projects relevant to the listed job requirements and responsibilities. It’s OK if it causes your resume to spill onto a second or third page, just remember that it’s your responsibility to tell your story in a clear, compelling way.

Optimize for AI, but Your Audience is a Person

While modern ATS like Zoho Recruit include AI-powered automation, human recruiters are still the ones setting up the ATS, interpreting the results, and manually picking which candidates to move forward with.

“DECISION MAKING IS IN THE HANDS OF HUMANS.”

SELVA, ZOHO

“[AI] will never make hiring decisions,” said Pradyumn of Zoho Recruit and modern ATS in general. “It will only make hiring suggestions. Automation systems just follow the preferences and rules [recruiters] configured.”

“The authority of decision making is in the hands of humans,” confirmed Selva, who went on to suggest that allowing AI to make hiring decisions could be dangerous because an AI’s mistakes might not get noticed as easily as a person’s.

 “Every intelligence that we provide is contextual,” he concluded. In other words, Zoho Recruit is meant to provide insights and save time for people, not replace them. “The decision at the end of the day is with the recruiter, with the hiring manager.”

ATS is the gate. A living, breathing recruiter is still the gatekeeper. So when you’re optimizing your resume keywords, remember that your goal shouldn’t be to “beat the bots” or game an algorithm like Zoho’s. Recruiters don’t like that. Instead, successful resume keyword optimization has always been about covering all your bases and tailoring your resume details to the specific job. Adding certain keywords to your resume is the result of that, not the objective.