I had a great time at the Midlands Student Conference today. One of the questions posed to the panel of speakers was about how to get a first role after graduation, either with experience but no HR job title (i.e. Practice Manager / EA who may have undertaken most HR tasks as part of their larger roles) or those with limited HR experience generally.
The advice was to highlight transferable skills and key values. However my question (which I didn't get an opportunity to ask) is how would one get through an ATS screening process without hitting certain job title and experience keywords?
I'd be grateful for some guidance /advice.
Many thanks
Key words are key !! Most definitely. Pay close attention to the frequency of the words and emboldening and capitals often helps. However, there are other things to be mindful of too. Always create your CV in a word document - PDF documents can sometimes obliterate all content and so regardless of whether you have key words detailed or not, you will still be overlooked as not all ATS systems are PDF friendly. Avoid putting content inboxes as again the information in the boxes can be missed when searching. Avoid fancy font; Avoid images and graphics - this means nothing to ATS systems. And avoid coloured paper. Ensure your CV has a town, city and postcode on it - location can be a key search criteria in itself.
In short, the simpler and the cleaner a CV - the better.
