Submitted by Gk26 on
in
Forums
Does anyone have tips on applying through Taleo and other applicant tracking systems? It is my understanding from research I have done that it can be setup to, and is often used to filter out candidates without even sending the application to a person. A number of people, including myself, have received rejection emails within a very short time of submittal , often at non-business hours.
(BTW, Taleo no longer offers the Taleo-Up generic profile that was able to be imported into <some> of the members using their service)
I own the interviewing series, meaning I am serious about trying to do everything right. I spent a lot of time on a cover letter, making sure I demonstrate how I meet most of the requirements as rarely does a role appear where one meets it perfectly. End-to-end, it might take 1 hour to fill out the 10 pages of fields in Taleo, write a custom cover letter, etc. If you apply to 7+ roles/week nationwide, that represents a lot of time, especially if one suspects it is all in vain.
As a Director in the IT space (software), I lead a global team but I don't put every single acronym for software product/version/technology, etc on my resume. ( I was not hired to use every software tool ever invented.) The goal is to try and be succinct with my skills, background, characteristics and experience and not list page upon page of 12 different unit testing tools, every version of Windows since Windows 95, etc.
I wonder if I need two resumes - one for applicant tracking systems and one for actual people. I also wonder what employers are setting Taleo to filter on. I always give my correct salary in that field, but am I being filtered for too high a salary, for my graduation date of college. or for not listing at least 5 different brands of the same tool, or for listing the wrong brand of tool, even though it does the exact same thing is the brand in their posting? What if I was $500 more/year than the max salary in a filter? In real life, that is nothing, but in an applicant tracking system, that is a "applicant failed - do not continue..."
With some positions, I have tried tracking people down on LinkedIn and reaching out politely. So far it isn't working for me.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Cheers mates