With today’s high unemployment rates, large companies are being bombarded with resumes, and they are turning to technology to quickly find the best candidates for their open positions.
Ed Struzik, an International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) expert on resume tracking systems, told the Wall St. Journal that over 90% of large companies are using a resume tracking system, and it would “be very rare to find a Fortune 500 company without one.”
Recruiters and hiring managers typically spend days, sometimes weeks and months, when trying to find the right person for a job. Most recruiters report that at least 50% of job hunters don’t possess the basic qualifications for the jobs they are pursuing.
The Wall St. Journal reported that Starbucks Corp. had 7.6 million job applicants for approximately 65,000 corporate and retail job openings over the past 12 months; Procter & Gamble Inc. received almost a million applications for only 2,000 new positions last year.
At many large companies the tracking system screens out about half of all résumés, says John Sullivan, a management professor at San Francisco State University. The tracking system scans the resumes for keywords and then selects the best candidates for the hiring manager to review.
The tracking system saves hiring managers an incredible amount of time and really helps to quickly pinpoint the applicants with the skills and experience that are perfectly aligned with the position he is trying to fill.
Job seekers who have sent their resume to a large corporation in response to an online job ad are aware that the chances of landing an interview are often times quite low. Job seekers should keep in mind that a tracking system could be doing the first round of sifting through applications, so it is important to customize your resume based on the job ad.