Picture this: You came across your dream company hiring for a position that you can ace easily. You invested enough time in preparing a CV and threw your hat in the ring.

Days passed by, and there was a deep silence from the other end. What could be a possible factor? Maybe you weren’t a suitable candidate? Or perhaps they hired someone else? Possibly they wanted to hire someone they personally knew.

^ Above mentioned cases cannot be true every time. A lot of the time, it’s just that recruiting managers are getting smarter with the evolving technology. Instead of manually evaluating CVs, they take help from ATS – Application Tracking Software. This kind of bot tosses out resumes that aren’t harmonized with SEO techniques and specific keywords.

After helping websites rank on search engines, SEO is also contributing to hiring processes. If you are tired of constant “silent treatments” from hiring managers, break yourself into a smile. This guide will ensure you no longer have to experience rejections. 

Without wasting any more time, take a look at the best SEO techniques for a CV and how to make it ATS-friendly.

How To Create An ATS-Friendly CV

Shake Hands With Keyword Optimization

Just like SEO is fond of keywords, ATS loves keywords in a resume. The best SEO technique for A CV is to naturally mention keywords in the resume.

But how do you find out the correct keywords for your resume?

There’s no rocket science in it! Every job description has a set of keywords mentioned in it. For example, the advertised JD says:

“We are looking for a candidate with leadership qualities.”

Then, leadership is the keyword.

When the recruiter searches in their database with the keyword “leadership”, your vitae is more likely to appear. Likewise, you will have to flick through the whole post, jot down the mentioned keywords and use them in your vitae.

Clean And Easy-To-Read CV Design

Fancy and shenanigans-attached CV designs might be eye candy for the human eye (trust us, they are not, but just in case), but ATS hates it! Bots need something that is quick to scan through and understand. It is strongly advised to submit your vitae in a Word document (or PDF only if the recruiter asks for it) and keep the whole document very simple to read. The font size and style should be basic, like “Arial” and “Calibri”. Don’t add funky colours to your vitae document until your job role requires it.

If you want your document to be decently eye-pleasing, go for black, white and blue. But you will have to perfectly balance the colour usage so neither the document look too colourful nor appears too dull.

Or even best – outsource your resume to our CV writing service. We have the best, most experienced designers who understand colour theory and are guaranteed to deliver ATS-friendly vitae.

Relevant Titles Is What Bot Looks For

The next thing bots search around for is relevant titles.

For instance, the position is specifically requiring a “Junior Executive Writer”, but you try to play smarter and mention yourself as “Senior Wordsmith” – be ready to experience refusal. That’s because your vitae won’t be detected or recognized by the ATS.

HR managers are snowed under enough responsibilities and won’t worry about manually going through the documents. Although your mentioned title appears to be creative enough, sadly, it won’t do any good in the long term.

Hence, if you have been trying to find the perfect position, make sure the titles are relevant and detectable.

Mention Required Qualifications

List down all relevant skills and qualifications required by the hiring manager in easy and scannable language. Do not mention irrelevant or unrequited skills; it just consumes extra space in your document and creates clutter. There’s no need to add about your strong work ethic or friendly behaviour. Bots won’t pay attention to this. However, you may mention qualifications because highlighting certifications can never be a bad idea.

Use Professional Language

You need to make sure your curriculum vitae possesses professional and crisp language. A perfect balance between professional and creative language needs to be stroked. Prepare your vitae document in a language that’s easy to understand. Remove any waffle or fluff from the document, and ensure it has no complex words.

If you find it hard to find the right ground that serves professionalism and creativity side by side, head to our resume writing services online. We have equipped ourselves with certified CV writers who understand how this domain works. They use a professional tone with a hint of creativity.  

Take Care Of Your Online Brand Presence

ATS bots are now intelligent enough to surf the applicants’ online profiles. This means if you are on LinkedIn, the bot will land your profile and assess it completely. Hence, applicants must stay one step ahead and ensure their online presence is clean. It is important to have similar details on your CV and online profiles. If the bot is unable to join the dots, it might just refuse to accept your vitae.

You can hide all the unimportant and embarrassing posts that aren’t relevant to your professional sphere.

Knock Out Templated Content

Think of a moment, if you can plan to copy-paste CV content from online sources, won’t other applicants exercise a similar act? They will!

That’s every applicant’s biggest blunder – using templated content from online sources. The sharp and clever ATS instantly detects it and pulls it out from the pile! Never ever – we repeat – never ever pick content from online sources and add it to your resume. Bots crave original and freshly brewed content.

We know writing a CV can be a lot of grind. To cut down your hassle, consider reaching out to professionals, and you’d be amazed at how perfectly they can prepare customized and unique CVs for you.

Winding Up

And that’s a wrap, with the seven best SEO techniques for a CV to make it ATS-friendly. These are the practices that we incorporate in our resume orders. We have been making customized and ATS-friendly CVs for customers for ages. Send us your details, and get a free CV review if you wish to take a subway to job success. We’ll prepare a resume that will instantly land on your hiring manager’s desk.