Most job seekers know the drill by now: You see the job you want on a website, hit the APPLY button and what often happens next? You’re face to face with a complex corporate recruitment engine that seemingly asks for everything from your complete academic transcript to every job you had since you threw newspapers for a living.
Are such recruitment engines on the career sites of MTV Networks, Time Inc., NBC Universal, AOL and other major media brands really worth the time and effort? If so, how can you best make them work for you?
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The 411 on Recruiting Engines
First, what are these engines and why do HR departments use them? Often called applicant tracking systems (ATS) or recruitment management systems (RMS), these products are sold to corporations to streamline their recruiting administration. Three of the biggest “powered by” players in the online recruiting world are Kenexa’s BrassRing (notable clients: NBC Universal, AOL, CBS), Taleo (MTV, Conde Nast) and Jobvite.com (The Daily Beast, Twitter and MSNBC).
For the job seeker, obvious benefits of using recruitment engines include getting the very latest information on open positions, creating personalized profiles and search agents that send job alerts to your email inbox, and being able to filter your searches to specify geography, skill set, department and other factors.
To recruiters, the engines simply make their jobs easier. These tools help HR departments maintain rich career websites, post vacancies on their own site and others, build searchable applicant databases, and enable easy tracking of open positions.
Keywords are Key
But what makes a recruiter’s job easier may also get in the way of a job seeker’s goals.
Tom Armour, co-founder of High Return Selection, which helps businesses with their recruitment needs, explains, “Because these systems are automated and designed to simplify the workload for recruiters who have thousands of applicants, they tend to make it more difficult for an applicant to demonstrate their merits and reach a real person in the company that uses these tools.”
To those folks, Armour says using the right keywords is vital. “If you’re applying to a corporate system such as Taleo or Kenexa, understand that your resume will be placed into a database and the recruiter will search that database for key terms,” he says. “Therefore, read the ad carefully and make sure your resume contains those key terms precisely as the company placed in their job advertisement.”
Blank Fields May Get Blank Looks
“If you see fields during the online application process, it’s always in your best interest to fill them out,” says HR technology consultant Tiffani Murray. “Some ATS/RMS allow for recruiters to search certain fields for the information you’ve provided. If you leave a section like ‘computer skills’ blank or don’t select the relevant options from the drop down menu of choices, you won’t show up in a search of that field.”
Anne Murguia, vice president at Jobvite, says if you want to take the quickest route, look specifically for those fields which are explicitly required. “If the basic information is on the resume, you probably don’t need to re-enter it,” she says. “But if a company asks specific questions pertaining to the skills or experience required for that job, you’d be wise to answer.”
Murray agrees. “If the option is presented, filling in only the mandatory fields and attaching your resume should be sufficient,” she says, but cautions: “If you are not clear and you see fields for skills or the ATS/RMS has questions that allow for multiple selections or checking off responses, go ahead and complete these sections. It really won’t take you long and covers all the bases if for some reason the data in those fields can be searched separately from the data in your resume.”
Murray also counsels applicants to be careful with every answer. “Keep in mind that if the first question says, ‘Do you have four years of experience?’ and you answer no, you may be sorted out of consideration automatically.”
But all is not lost even if you get filtered out. “If the recruiter decides or is informed by the hiring manager that they can be more flexible in a certain area, for instance the years of experience, the recruiter can always go back and look at all people who applied,” says Murray.
Be Specific…
Tailoring your resume for a recruitment site means not just including relevant details, but also excluding extraneous ones. “Applicant tracking systems score resumes based on how relevant they are to individual job openings. Your score may be jeopardized if you list a smorgasbord of skills,” says Mona Abdel-Halim, director of sales and marketing for resume building service Resunate.com. “Keep your content focused, so it’s easily recalled by both machine and human eyes.”
Lindsay Stanton, chief client officer for Job Search Television Network, which creates recruitment engines for Fortune 500 clients, counsels job seekers to include as much specific, relevant information as possible. “In general, the more comprehensive the information space allows for, the better,” she says. “You never know what may be a key trigger point for the recruiter reviewing your application… this is particularly important for someone seeking a more senior role or with certifications.”
Stanton also cautions against aiming for jobs outside your qualifications. “Do not apply for positions you do not have the skill set or history to qualify for… You do not want to be blacklisted for over-applying.”
…But Not Too Specific
“Avoid common mistakes like being too specific about past salary, which could get you screened out,” says Robert Hellmann, NYU adjunct professor and president of Hellmann Career Consulting. “And don’t list references; you don’t want them bothered unless they are serious about you, in which case you want to prep your references for the call.”
Don’t Blow Your Cover
The value of a cover letter in a conventional job application is a point of contention, but cover letters have much more influence and exposure within a tracking application. “A cover letter is likely the first document the recruiter will see in your profile in the ATS,” Murray explains. “Make sure that the cover letter is just as strong as your resume and that it compliments the information in the resume.”
Murguia agrees that the cover letter in a tracking system is important. “It indicates that the job seeker isn’t applying en masse, but is truly interested in the opportunity at this particular company,” she says. “Take the time to reference why you’re interested in the company and why you’d be good at the job.”
Murray recommends keeping various versions of your cover letters in a file on your personal hard drive so you can cut and paste content instead of starting each application from scratch. Just don’t forget to customize those letters for each particular employer.
Get the Lowdown Before You Upload
Career sites are not just places to hand over your information; it’s also useful for getting their information. Susan Amori, director of talent acquisition operations at AOL, points out that a corporate career site can reveal important details about a position that may not be found elsewhere.
“Company job sites can be helpful for exploring current openings and getting details around a particular role,” she says. “Resumes should be customized for a particular role, so that you align your experience with the position as closely as possible. If you look at the top two to three key responsibilities listed for the role and highlight how your experience aligns in the top two to three bullets on your resume, you’ll have a better shot of getting that first screening call.”
Amori also recommends using a company’s career site to get a better sense of its corporate culture and connecting it to your own interests. “At AOL, one of our values is around helping others, whether that be helping our consumers or making an impact in our communities. If a candidate can weave in examples of how they’ve demonstrated helping others in their resume, that can be a differentiator when comparing candidates.”
(Microsoft) Word to the Wise
Murray recommends job applicants keep a version of their resumes in a simple Word format. “Tables, charts or other graphics may hinder the ATS’ ability to properly read your resume and store the data,” she says. “Similarly, though many applicants save their resumes as PDFs, it’s better to submit a Microsoft Word document to avoid any issues with the acceptance of the document.”
Now armed with all this advice and insight, are you ready to start your recruitment system safari? We’ve done some of the hunting for you. Here are shortcuts to a few of the most popular media career sites:
NBC Universal (iVillage, BRAVO, SyFy, USA Networks, MSNBC)
Disney/ABC
Time Warner (Time Inc., HBO, Turner, Warner Bros.)
CBS
AOL Huffington Post Media Group
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