In today's tough job market, job seekers are facing a new challenge: navigating AI-powered applicant tracking systems. While these systems help companies sift through resumes, they can oftentimes miss qualified candidates. Andrew McCaskill, Linkedin career expert joined TheStreet to discuss how to get around this.
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CONWAY GITTENS: I'm wondering, we've talked about using AI to fix up your resume. This is anecdotal. Yeah, a number of my friends feel like AI and the new computer world are like throwing away resumes. They're clearly qualified for the job. They, you know, they send in their resume and the computer is tossing their resume. How do we in this age work around that. So that we're not getting thrown away right away by the technology?
ANDREW MCCASKILL: Yeah, I mean, let's jump into it. This is the career advice that I would give to anybody who says that they feel that has happened to them. One is they've got to take a look at their resume and say, OK, if this resume is not working, what do I need to do to change it? Right number one is you've got to start identifying your skills and talking about your skills in a different way. Look at those job descriptions for those jobs and think to yourself, here's the job description. Here's my resume. Would I hire me? Does is does the skills that I have outlined here on my resume match up to the skills that these folks are hiring for? Right if something is not working, you have to pivot and pivot faster.
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Right the other thing is, is that sending out a paper resume is just not how most people are sourcing talent anymore. So you need to be able to fight a ground game and an air game if you want to get a job in this market. So having your resume that you send out into applications, great. But you also need to have an updated LinkedIn profile because everybody uses LinkedIn to source talent. It's just the thing. Like I would say that even if I didn't work at LinkedIn, the other thing that I think that you have to think about is, how do I set up my profile so that my skills match up for the type of opportunities I want? And you have to go about looking for a new job with innovation. So that means, again, reach out to your network, start to think about who do I know, get in your group chat and say, this is a job that I'm looking at the street. Looks really good. Who do we know who works at the street? Who do we know? Who knows? somebody who works at the street. That is how people are starting. You're going to have to get in there and say, I'm not just going to spray and pray and just throw all of these applications out there. I'm going to be really strategic about a smaller subset of those applications and go really hard for them.
