How To “Hack” The Automated Resume Screeners Used By All Big Companies

Today, this post is a little bit different. I’m going to teach you how to get past the pesky automated resume screener that all big corporations use to ‘weed’ out applicants. I was tired of applying for hundreds of mechanical engineering internship jobs each summer and never receiving a call. Once I added this little ‘hack’ I was able to increase my number of interviews by 400%, while only applying to the jobs that I actually wanted. I went from doing the typical intern grunt work for minimum wage, to sitting in my own office making upwards of $60/h.

Do you ever read a job description and just know that you would be the perfect fit? You know if you get called in for an interview you will astonish the interviewers and they’ll have no choice but to hire you. All you need to do is get to the interview stage. You spend so much time curating your resume to make it specific for that job, all to have the employer never even contact you.

Most of the time when the employer doesn’t contact you it’s because you have been filtered out of the running based on a couple skills that you are missing, or a couple words that weren’t present on your resume. The first thing we need to do in order to ‘hack’ the automated screener is understand how it works.

Your resume is received and it is entered into a parser. The parsers job is to filter through your resume and ‘look’ for certain strings of characters. The employer then enters certain words that pertain to the job you have applied for. The amount of words that you have matching on your resume, with the words that the employer enters, is how your resume is graded. Then based upon this grade, you may or may not be contacted. So how, you ask, can you get past the parser and come up to the employers view? Easy.

At the bottom of your resume, type out all of the possible buzz words and experience that pertain to the job you are applying for that you can think of (even if you don’t have the experience). Make the font smaller if you have to, I mean literally cram everything in. Once you have everything you can possibly think of the computer parser looking for, highlight your newly added text and change the colour of it to white.

Once you have changed this text to white, the parser can still see it and you will receive one of the highest resume scores. However, the employer cannot see the text so you are not lying about your experience. This will make your resume pop up to the top of the list for the employer, and in turn will guarantee that it will be read by human eyes.This will nine times out of ten get you called in for an interview.

As I stated, once I thought of this technique I realized how many companies were calling me back. I was able to stop applying to every job possible and only apply to the jobs in which I actually wanted. Now I have a summer job that I enjoy in the place I wanted to work.

Once you get past the the resume sorting, all you have to do to get the job is crush the interview. But that is for a future blog post.

How to Make the Most out Of your Weekend (while You still Have one)

Ah the glory of the 5 day weekly grind, all for the excitement of 2 days off. Who doesn’t love Saturday and Sunday? This post is about how to optimize your enjoyment during the 2 measly days off per week while you still have them. I say while you still have them because hopefully, if you are like me, you are working towards living everyday as the weekend. I am going to go through how I currently view the weekend in order to optimize my happiness instead of just letting it drift past.

I’m lucky as this weekend is Memorial Day so I will be getting Monday off. Woo! This means my ‘work day’ to ‘play day’ ratio is 3:4 as opposed to the norm of 2:5. This is huge! It increases my ‘play day’ percentage from 28.5% to 42.8%. There are 3 things that I like to make sure that I do every single weekend (even if I only get one day off) that I’m going to out line. I will also say what they are going to be for me this weekend and the importance of why every one should be doing them.

The first is to make sure you try something new every single weekend. This can be anything from trying to read a new book genre to something crazy like learning to drive a dirt bike. This is important because it will make the weekend memorable. When you look back during the week it won’t feel like the weekend floated past. It will give you something interesting to talk about when people ask. This doesn’t have to be anything expensive, for example my ‘try something new’ task this weekend is to go to the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium in Montreal to see two shows about the galaxy and the stars. It’s $14 and supposed to be a great time.

The second thing I do every weekend is learn something new. This ties in with the first goal as most likely, if you are trying something new you are going to learn something new as well. Another great way to learn something new that I use daily is to listen to podcasts. I personally recommend The Tim Ferriss Show*, as there is an episode for every type of person there. My challenge for you next time you are driving in the car, find a podcast that interests you and put it on instead of music. I did this challenge and I cannot remember the last time I have listened to music while driving, I always have a podcast on. Not only am I learning but I feel I am more alert and don’t get sleepy while driving.

The third and easiest weekend goal is to treat yourself. This doesn’t have to be anything massive. For example last weekend I treated myself with cinnamon roll pancakes from The Pantry, a delicious breakfast restaurant in New Haven, Connecticut. They were $4 and worth every penny, along with the 4 hour sugar crash that followed. You deserve to treat yourself because, until you can live every day as your weekend, you made it through another grueling week!

Once bonus thing that I personally try and do every weekend (or even every day) is enjoy the world around you. Make it something small, like the cloud outside your window, the sound of a bird, the sun, or even the rain. Last night I biked to the ocean and once I got there I sat and listened to the waves hitting the rocky piers for some time before biking home. Think about the natural phenomena behind the small things and get curious about them. This is a wonderful time to be alive, make sure you don’t take the small things for granted.

*Don’t worry about it Tim, this one is on me.

Be Curious

Curiosity is a virtue that many of us lack or do not have at all. I’m not talking about being curious as to what is going to happen in the next episode of Grey’s Anatomy or Game of Thrones. I am talking about the curiosities in life that produce excitement. Excitement stems from many different area’s for different individuals, whether it be from something as simple as reading a new book, or as exhilarating as sky diving.

Think back to when you were a child, what did you want to be? What passions did you have? Each morning when you woke up what were you excited to do? Dig deep and ask yourself these questions, and think about why you don’t live for what excites you.

Very often the thing that excites you the most is your passion, yet unfortunately due to all the distractions in the modern world so many of us have not been able to find our passion. We get sucked in to the daily grind of working the majority of the week and “living” for the weekend. The true successful people are the ones who have found there passion and what excites them, through their curiosities. These successful people have created there every day lifestyle doing what they love to do, and there is no reason that you can’t be one of those people.

Curiosity: The Greatest Asset

I am not a writer, nor have I ever written before. In fact, English was consistently my worst subject throughout my entire academic career. It was so bad that I almost had to take an English proficiency class at the first university I attended. This is an self experiment with the goal of becoming better at writing. I am beginning this blog because I am curious to see where it leads. I don’t know what this page will consist of, nor do I have any expectations. It has purely been created while procrastinating at work.

I will write about anything and everything that I have a curiosity about, as well as try to instill the virtue of curiosity in those who are reading. I hope you are ready for the journey, it’s is going to be a bumpy ride.