In 2025, your resume is not for humans.

Jake Nelken — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 02:33:54 +0000

Last month, a recruiter said to me

"Your resume was flagged. For this role, you need experience in…[pause] building enterprise level B2B SaaS applications.

Do you have experience in building enterprise level B2B SaaS applications?"

Uhh — I was shocked. That's all my career has been for the past 8 years. It should be obvious to anyone in the tech industry after reading the first 2-3 bullets. My ego took a hit.

You call yourself a tech recruiter?? 💭

It was clear he was reading this off some sort of note – he was so confident in his delivery but also clearly didn't understand the words he was saying. I spent a minute pointing out how it should be clear that yes — I do in fact have experience building enterprise level B2B SaaS applications(!).

Then he spilled the tea 🫖.

He was using an ATS resume checker to enhance and rewrite resumes for candidates before submitting them and was reading aloud the feedback to me.

Now I was intrigued. Knowing that ATS resume checkers cost $$$ I decided to take the ego hit and keep the conversation going.

“What else was it saying about my resume?”

Over the next few minutes, I discovered the harsh truth that while my resume was well-written (for a human), it didn't include the (blatantly obvious) keywords necessary to pass this company’s ATS filter.

You would think with AI these systems would be a little bit smarter than using some keyword regex matchers – you're wrong! Turns out you absolutely can get rejected from a job if you don't offer the infamous keyword soup.

Don’t make the mistake I did 🙅. I thought I looked desperate if I sprinkle buzzwords into my resume. Put your ego aside and toss them in like it’s nobody’s business.

Because the truth is, no one is actually going to read it.

Well, at least not until you get past the castle walls that is ATS.

Forem: Jake Nelken

In 2025, your resume is not for humans.