When you submit your resume online there’s a good chance it is going through an applicant tracking system or ATS for short. An applicant tracking system is software that many hiring companies use to collect, sort, and rank the high volume of resumes they receive. While the following technique will not work every single time, here is one way to tell if your resume is going through an ATS and if so, which one. While on the careers page of a companies website watch the URL in the address bar of your browser to see if it changes after you click an “apply now” button. After you click “apply now” look for names in the URL like “workday”, “applytracking”, “paycom”, “brassring”, “jazzhr”, and “lever”. These are the names of popular applicant tracking systems. There are more out there, these are just some examples. Here's an example of where to look and what to look for in the address bar:
Once you know if your resume is going through an ATS you can then take steps to optimize your resumes format and content for these systems. Head over to our Resume Match tool to optimize your resume for these systems.