About fueled fears in the English-speaking countries
The trend to the automated (pre-)processing of application documents is unbroken and actually gathering pace in Central Europe. It is understandable that the topic Robot Recruiting and first sighting of application documents through computer algorithms – instead of human beings as it was until now – makes many job seekers feel uncertain.
What should my CV look like so that I will not be disadvantaged or even withdrawn in advance because of “formal mistakes”? What do I have to take into account? And who is competent enough to give me good advice?
So, it is about time to pay attention to this question. JoinVision has been offering semantic recruitment systems for more than a decade and our CV parser CVlizer is a standard for the automated processing of application documents in Central Europe. Therefore, it is quite likely that your CV will be analyzed through our software, when you are in the application process.
Good news and an all-clear for all job seekers first: usually you don’t have to change anything in your CV.
This, even though guidelines circulate in the Internet– especially in English speaking countries – that wordily and sometimes on more than 20 pages explain, what is a No-Go when writing a CV and what you have to do to prevent your application from ending up in the Nirvana. But not only this, they also suggest one should have two CVs: one for the software and one for the humans. We do see that a little different. A good CV parsing system goes by the applicant, not the other way round. Modern semantic CV analysis tools such as our CVlizer are designed very flexible, so that they can deal with a big variety of data formats as well as various formattings and arrangements.
Generally, the same rules apply for automatically processed CVs as they have always applied for application documents: Design your CV clear, well structured, easily readable and don’t use any type of password protection in case of an electronical application. Write as much as necessary about your education and career phases, but concentrate on the essentials. Attach the documents to your application that are relevant regarding time and content, don’t transmit a 100-page application and keep the amount of data small – more than a couple of MB for the complete application are definitely too much.
Generally, one can say: what is easy to handle and read for humans, is also for the software easier to interpret correctly. If a human has trouble to read an application, also when it comes to its length, the software will have even more difficulty. It also doesn’t make much sense (anymore) to optimize CVs regarding a certain job offer. The number of catchwords does not matter for a semantic system, as it understands and appropriately considers textual dependencies and similarities. Using the same phrases in the CV as you find them in the job ad you are applying to, therefore is not expedient. Next to your CV, often school and work certificates are analyzed, that cannot be modified for a certain job ad anyways.
Unfortunately, there are many self-proclaimed experts in the field of CV parsing, that recommend these things to applicants together with other questionable advice. So, it definitely is no good advice to use the MS Word format instead of PDF and to do without formattings or special fonts or even without tables. Quite the contrary: the more (useful) formattings a CV has, the easier the CV can be read by humans, the easier it is for the software to interpret it – logically. And hereby different font sizes, fat and italic letters, paragraphs, charts and colors are really helpful. And THE worldwide standard for exchanging documents that should be read only (and no recruiter wants to rework your CV!) is PDF. It guarantees that your CV arrives and gets analyzed how you’ve sent it. Even though systems like the CVlizer supports any file format you can think of, your application will end up on a human’s desk, and they should also be able to easily open the document.
In this context one will have to consider one thing with scanned documents, as attachments usually and CVs rarely are: the higher the scanned pages’ quality, the better they can be processed. Here a minimum resolution of 300dpi and a clean template should be emphasized. And if the documents exist in digital anyways, they should be preferred to the scanned documents. Applicants that have to rely on a portfolio due to their work or branch, can be quite relaxed: this kind of applications will hardly be automatically analyzed in the future, as the ability to reflect and interpret art and personal taste are and always will be foreign to a computer system.
There is not much more that job seekers have to take into account, when they want to apply online on a modern platform – “Come as you are” will remain the motto for your application documents, even and especially, when cutting-edge, specialized software systems like our CVlizer make a first analysis of your data. And apart from all the other positive aspects, there is one special advantage for every job seeker: your sex, age, your origin or your looks do not count for our software – these outdated social concepts are unknown to our software systems.
Last but not least we would like to put our best expert for controlling and optimizing your application documents to your heart: our free and totally anonymous online demo. Have your CV or your complete application portfolio analyzed by our software and make sure that your future digital application will be a success!
