Serious question, has anyone else had a resume scanner reject them for a job they were clearly qualified for?

Mine got flagged last week for a data analyst role requiring 3 years of SQL experience, which I have from my 4 years at my current firm, because the algorithm parsed my resume differently than a human would.

4 comments

4 Comments

shanef342mo ago

Blame your resume format, not the scanner. It's your job to make your skills obvious to the system.

bennett.harper2mo agoMost Upvoted

Yeah, and I'm over here still trying to figure out which fancy font is the ATS kryptonite. My last resume probably got scanned and filed under "creative writing project." It's a special skill to make "made coffee" sound like "managed high-stakes beverage operations" for the bots. You're right though, we all gotta play the keyword game even if it feels silly.

bennett.harper2mo agoMost Upvoted

Blame your resume format" feels like telling someone to just get a better printer when the whole system is broken. The scanners should work for people, not the other way around.

blair_nguyen17d ago

I see where @bennett.harper is coming from, but is getting rejected by a scanner really that big of a deal? It happens all the time, you just move on and apply somewhere else. People act like one bot reading a resume wrong is a career ending tragedy when really it just means you need to tweak how you write your experience. The system is annoying but it's not some huge conspiracy against qualified workers. Half the time these rejections save you from wasting time on a job that would've been a bad fit anyway.