No one is perfect. Not in their personal lives. Or their work lives. Over the course of your career, you’ve probably had a few stumbles.
Maybe you made some poor choices or were on the receiving end of one, like:
- You job hopped
- You pivoted
- You got the wrong experience
- You got fired
Or maybe life circumstances put you in a place of employment disadvantage:
- You didn’t get the degree
- You took a career break
- You aged
It’s no one’s fault but these circumstances can end up looking like a blemish on your resume.
Challenges of trying to hide your flaws
When you rely mostly on applying for a job, you run the risk of these flaws being discovered. Despite how well you craft the resume and address it in the cover letter, these flaws often lead to an application rejection. The applicant tracking system has been programmed to kick out anything that doesn’t look like an ideal match.
Your frustration boils because you know you can succeed in this job if given the chance.
So you need to circumvent the system. Instead of expending effort on trying to trick the program, figure out the alternative method that will have you seen as a person. Not just a list of shortcomings.
How to circumvent the ATS
The best way to get around the ATS is to connect with humans who can see the bigger picture. This means networking. Through networking, you’re able to express who you are with more than a few pre-written words. You get to express how you can make an impact in the work you will do and the way you will do it.
If you think about the hiring process from the hiring manager’s perspective, they just want to solve a problem. Yes, they care about hard skills and qualifications to ensure the job can get done but they equally (and oftentime more so) care about how you do the work.
They would be delighted to hire someone who is easy to work with. Someone who has a bias towards action, independence, creativity, hard work, adaptability, problem solving, team collaboration, leadership, and quick learning.
Through networking you can present your whole story in such a way that your flaws become an afterthought. The hiring manager gets the reminder that years of experience and certifications are not the only criteria for a good match. How you deal with challenges, even personal ones, says a lot about how well you’ll do.
A true story of this in action
This year, a woman named Diana reached out to me to introduce herself. She had only been with my company a couple years. In 2021, she had left a long career as an elementary school teacher after burning out from teaching during Covid.
She joined our company as a corporate trainer as this was a good segue from teaching to corporate. But her ultimate goal was to become a project manager. She looked at the corporate trainer role as a stepping stone.
She reached out to me for a networking meeting, eager to learn more about my project management role and how she could best position herself for break into project management.
On our call, we talked about how she had navigated her non-traditional career. She told me stories of her teaching experience and how she honed skills critical to both project management and corporate training. Things like creativity, rapport building, problem solving, adaptability, organization, to name a few.
Throughout our discussion, Diana made clear to me she was more than qualified. I knew—despite Diane’s lack of practical experience—she would thrive in a project management role. At the end of the call, I told her I wanted to introduce her to my VP who was eager for teammates that demonstrated skills like hers.
Two weeks later, I learned she was joining our team.
Wrap-up
Many of us have imperfections in our employment history. While we may have good explanations for them or even try to avoid them, the ATS is designed to rule out any candidate with less than perfect credentials or experience.
We need to connect directly with the humans who can appreciate the twists and turns of our careers. People who can hear us out as we convey to them what we can achieve, even when things don’t follow the perfect path. It’s only through networking that message can be shared.