What's in a name

It’s been a while since I’ve tangled with recruiters and recruiting technology. But some things just don’t change.

Witness what I got when I uploaded my résumé to Taleo, one of the two or three applicant tracking systems (ATS) with a lock on the market. Could have been one of their competitors—they’re all pretty much of a muchness.

The deal is, you upload your résumé, and it’s supposed to populate their fields—first name, last name, contact details, work history. The algorithm is meant to do all the heavy lifting so you can then jump through all the mindless hoops they insist on before they blow you off.

I looked at the first screen after I uploaded; here’s what I saw:

CSPO indicates that I’m a Certified Scrum Product Owner; it’s at the top of my résumé, next to my name, so that even recruiters can register it. You have to make these things obvious; I’d paint it red if I thought that would help. How it got converted to being my first name I cannot tell.

Their algorithm needs work.