What Is Resume Parsing & How Does An ATS Read Data From a CV?

Did you know that approximately 99% of Fortune 500 organizations rely on applicant tracking systems to streamline their hiring process? That’s right! These powerful systems are at the forefront of modern recruitment, and understanding how they work is essential for job seekers and employers alike.

If you’re a recruiter or HR professional, you understand the significance of finding top-notch talent for your organization. However, you’re also familiar with reviewing and evaluating countless resumes for each job opening. That’s where resume parsing comes in to save the day.

In today’s fast-paced world, standing out in the job market can be challenging. With hundreds, if not thousands, of applications flooding recruiters’ inboxes, it’s crucial to grasp the inner workings of resume parsers and applicant tracking system technology. These intelligent tools are key to unlocking opportunities and securing your dream job.

What Is Resume Parsing?

The digital processing and analysis of resumes, also known as resume parsing, has become a crucial tool for streamlining the recruiting process. A resume parsing software uses automated techniques to extract key details from resumes into a structured data format. This enriched data allows organizations to efficiently search, filter, and match resumes to open roles.

 

For recruiters, resume parsing tools can save time and money. It allows them to quickly sort through high volumes of resumes based on relevant criteria like skills, experience, qualifications, etc. For candidates, resume parsing helps to match them with suitable opportunities, increasing their chances of getting noticed without spending too much time on job boards.

There are several methods to use CV parsing, each with different strengths. Statistical and keyword-based parsing are common, analyzing the frequency and proximity of key terms. Grammar-based parsing uses natural language processing to interpret the semantic meaning. The approach depends on factors like the resume’s complexity and format.

CV parsing has become essential for modern, high-volume recruiting. It gives recruiters the ability to efficiently and accurately evaluate candidates at scale. It also improves the candidate experience by speeding up and simplifying the application process. Overall, resume parsing is a win-win, optimizing how organizations attract and evaluate new talent.

What Are The Types Of Resume Parsing Software?

Three primary types of resume parsing software are available to help businesses efficiently screen applications: statistical parsing, keyword-based parsing, and grammar-based parsing. Each offers different strengths and capabilities:

1. Statistical Parsing

Statistical parsing uses mathematical algorithms to analyze the structure and patterns of resumes. It can detect numerical information with high accuracy, such as addresses, phone numbers, and employment timelines. Statistical CV parsing is also effective at understanding word context and relationships and helps distinguish between similar phrases with different meanings.

2. Keyword-Based Parsing

Keyword-based parsing is the most common and straightforward approach. It searches resumes for specific keywords and phrases that match the requirements listed in the original job listing. Keyword-based parsing allows businesses to quickly identify candidates with certain skills, education, credentials, and experience. However, it may also yield false positives or miss relevant applicants if the resume does not contain the exact keywords.

3. Grammar-Based Parsing

Grammar-based parsing relies on the grammatical rules of language to determine the meaning and context of words or phrases. It can discern whether a word like “responsible” refers to a candidate’s attribute or describes their job duties. Grammar-based CV parsing helps minimize irrelevant results and focuses on the closest match candidates. However, it requires sophisticated algorithms and may struggle with grammatically incorrect or poorly structured resumes.

How Does Resume Parser Exactly Work?

By eliminating the need for manual data entry and enabling faster and more accurate candidate matching, resume parsing software significantly improves the speed and productivity of the hiring process. Here’s a general overview of how to parse resumes:

Step 1 – Input

First, you upload the document. It can be in any format, such as PDF and Word.

Step 2 – Pre-Processing

Then, it removes formatting, images, or other elements. It may also convert the resume into a simple format, such as plain text, to make it easier to analyze.

Step 3 – Text Segmentation

The parser breaks the resume text into individual words. This step helps the parser identify and extract specific pieces of information, such as names and skills.

Step 4 – Parsing

The parser then uses NLP and ML algorithms to identify and drag suitable data from the resume, such as contact details, education, experience, & skills. This step may involve techniques like keyword matching, pattern recognition, and entity recognition.

Step 5 – Structuring

The extracted information is organized into a structured format, such as a database or a JSON object. This structured data can then be easily stored, analyzed, and used by recruiters or HR professionals.

Step 6 – Output

The structured data is presented to the user, who can match candidates with job openings, track applicant data, or perform other HR-related tasks.

What Are The Benefits Of Resume Parsing?

Resume parsing is an essential tool recruiters use to streamline the hiring process, save time, and improve the quality of hires. But it offers a lot more benefits than just that:

1. Faster & More Effective Data Processing

A resume parser’s main advantage is that it can help you handle candidate data quickly and efficiently. Depending on your industry, your candidates may have different types of information and sections in their resumes, making manual processing tedious and time-consuming.

Instead of wasting time and resources entering resume data by hand, you can use a resume parser to automate this task and save work hours. An online resume parser can also handle different resume formats, languages, and layouts without problems.

2. Reduced Risk of Errors

Another benefit of parsing resumes with a specialized tool is that it can minimize the chances of making mistakes while entering and analyzing candidate data. Even if you are very careful and attentive, you can still overlook or misinterpret some important details in the resume.

An online resume parser, on the other hand, is designed to extract and classify the data accurately and reliably. This is especially useful if you work in an industry where candidates must list specific skills, terms, or numbers that can be easily misspelled or confused. Using a resume parser, you can ensure the data you get is correct and consistent.

3. Advantage of Automation

A key feature of parsing resumes with a dedicated platform is that it allows you to automate the process of screening and sorting resumes. This means you can delegate the tedious and repetitive task of parsing resumes to an AI algorithm that can do it faster and better.

This can bring many benefits to your hiring process, such as freeing up more time for other activities, improving your productivity and efficiency, and enhancing your decision-making process.

4. Consistency in Parsed Data

Using a ATS resume parser also ensures that your candidate data is consistent regardless of how many resumes you use daily. Whether you parse a few or a lot of resumes each day, you can trust that the resume parser will segment the data similarly.

Before integrating an ATS resume parser into your hiring process, you must set up custom parameters and parsing formats. Once you set up a data storage system that suits your needs, parsing and reviewing additional candidate data will be very easy in the future.

5. Standardized Output

Another challenge that you may face in your hiring process is that your candidates may submit their resumes in different formats. These formats may include PDFs, .doc files, .txt files, or others, making it hard for HR to read and compare resumes manually.

However, using a resume parsing platform to solve those issues, you can standardize your output format for all resumes. This will simplify accessing and analyzing relevant data with a click of a button once the selection process begins. It will also ensure that your HR staff doesn’t have to use multiple software applications to open candidate resumes.

6. Improved Candidate Matching

Finally, using a resume parsing platform is not only about data entry. A professional resume parser can also help you match candidates to their suitable positions more effectively and accurately.

To do that correctly, you must set up criteria and keywords for each position you want to fill. Then, the online resume parser will scan the resumes and rank them according to how well they match your criteria. This will help you narrow your candidate pool and focus on the most qualified and relevant applicants for each position.

How To Choose A Resume Parser?

When it comes to choosing the best resume parsing software, making the right decision is crucial for optimizing your recruitment process. Here are some key factors to consider:

• The parser should be able to handle resumes in all major formats, including PDF, DOC, DOCX, HTML, and RTF.
• The solution should integrate easily with your existing recruitment software and workflows.
• It should have an extensive library of taxonomies to accurately identify candidate skills, experience, education, and more.
• The parser should be able to handle resumes in multiple languages by automatically detecting the language and region.
• The solution should enable fair and unbiased recruiting and hiring practices.
• It should be able to extract a comprehensive set of data points from each resume.
• It should provide summarized overviews of candidates for quick evaluation and screening.
• It should utilize techniques like deep learning to improve extraction accuracy and better understand each resume’s content.
• It should allow recruiters to parse resumes simultaneously through bulk uploading and bulk email inbox integration.
• The parsing tool should work well with your email provider, so you can parse resumes you get through email. It should also integrate the parsing feature easily into your website or application.
• The ATS resume parser should output the parsed resume data in a consistent and structured format.

Wrapping Up

Recruiting and hiring managers use resume parsing and applicant tracking systems to screen many applications quickly and effectively. These resume parsing tools help them find the best candidates for the job. Resume parsing helps extract key data from resumes and convert them into a standardized format to read and analyze them by an ATS. The ATS then uses the parsed data to match candidates to job openings based on skills, experience, education, and other factors.

For job seekers, it is important to understand how resumes are parsed and processed by ATS software. A clear, concise, and ATS-optimized resume is more likely to surpass the initial screening. While resume parsing is an imperfect science, the more closely your resume matches the desired skills and experience, the better your chances of ranking highly in the ATS and catching a recruiter’s eye.

The rise of resume parsing and applicant tracking systems has transformed the hiring process, enabling companies to efficiently process applications at high volumes and find the most qualified candidates.