How to make sure that a robot can read your résumé

Don't bother tailoring your résumé to individual employers, said ZipRecruiter CEO Ian Siegel.Instead, use simple language that a parser can pick up.Siegel said too many job-seekers try to get creative and gimmicky in their résumés.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.“If you want to get an interview for your dream job,” said Ian Siegel, “you better make sure that a robot can read your résumé.”Siegel is the cofounder and CEO of job-listing and recruiting platform ZipRecruiter. He told Business Insider that the best way to make sure your job application gets the hiring manager's attention is to be as simple and straightforward as possible. No gimmicky formats; no flowery language.In the recent past, these attempts at creativity might have caught the hiring manager's eye. Today？ A robot might get confused and pass over your application.Siegel said more than 70% of employers and recruiters are using some form of résumé parser to pre-process the document, create summaries of the candidate pool, and sometimes rank candidates against each other.So you'll want to make sure the parser can understand your résumé. To that end, Siegel shared three rules for job-seekers:1. Simplify your job title“Normalize your job title to the most common expression” of that role, Siegel said. “You want to use the exact description an employer would type into” a job-search platform.For example, Siegel said, “don't say you're a coding ninja; say you're a Python engineer.”2. Use a standard résumé formatToo many job seekers are guilty of getting creative with their résumé format. “Robots like structure,” Siegel said. Avoid, for example, a two-column design, with your jobs on the left and your skills on the right.“You want to just put everything in a linear, top-to-bottom fashion, in the most traditional, standard format you can find.”3. Stick to straightforward language“There's zero points for prose,” Siegel said. “The résumé parser is trying to go through and identify things like what skills do you have, how many years of experience do you have, and what proof points do you have.”You'll therefore want to steer clear of long sentences and sophisticated descriptions of your responsibilities. For example, if you're a nurse, don't say, “I've had a long journey from nursing school through many different hospitals.” Say instead, “I am a nurse with five years of experience.”Siegel's tips add a twist to advice from Daniel Chait, CEO of recruiting-software company Greenhouse. Chait advised against the “spray-and-pray approach,” in which you submit exactly the same résumé to 50 different employers and hope for the best. Candidates who specialize their applications tend to be more successful, he said.Chait said that, if you're applying to a creative role and a project-manager role, for example, you might submit two different versions of your résumé.Read more: The CEO of a recruiting-software company that works with Slack, Airbnb, and Venmo says you can reverse-engineer your job search to get the best offers possibleTo be sure, Siegel's rules for making your résumé robot-friendly come with a few caveats.If you really want to tailor your résumé to the specific employer, do that in a sentence or a paragraph at the top of your résumé, Siegel said. And if you want to flaunt your writing skills or unique personality, save it for your cover letter (and interview).Siegel also clarified that, when it comes to senior-level positions, most candidates are recruited through their network or recruiters, so their résumés will receive “extra special attention,” Siegel said.If that's you, “go to town. Tell your story. You're not relying on robots to read your résumé in order to get you in front of a human being. Human beings are fighting for the chance to read your résumé.”