Guide
An applicant tracking system is software Australian employers use to collect, parse and search job applications. What happens next varies by employer: some rank applicants against the ad, many simply store applications for a recruiter to read. A plainly formatted CV that uses the ad's own wording is easier for both the software and the person to assess.
Most Australian employers above a certain size collect applications through recruitment software, usually called an applicant tracking system. What happens next depends entirely on how that employer has configured it, and this is where most advice online goes wrong.
An ATS is, at its simplest, a database. It receives your application, stores it, and gives recruiters somewhere to work through a pile of candidates. Beyond that, employers configure it very differently.
Some parse your CV into structured fields so a recruiter can search a few hundred applicants for a licence, a qualification or a location. Some rank applicants against the wording of the ad. Many do neither, and a human opens every application in the order it arrived.
The useful conclusion is not that software is rejecting you. It is that your application has to survive a step where it may be read as plain text by something with no judgement, before it reaches someone with plenty.
Two things follow, and both are within your control.
Make the document parseable. Text in tables, columns, headers, footers and text boxes is the material most likely to be dropped or scrambled when a CV is converted to text. A plain, well-structured document is not a less sophisticated one. It is a more reliable one.
Use the words the ad uses. Matching is literal. Software does not know that "stakeholder engagement" and "working with the business" describe the same work, or that "cannulation" and "peripheral IV insertion" are the same skill. Where the ad's phrasing is also true of you, use the ad's phrasing.
Most of the advice you will find is written for American hiring, and some of it is actively wrong here.
Australian CVs run longer, and two to three pages is normal rather than a failure of editing. Photos, dates of birth and marital status are not expected and are better left off. Public sector, health and education roles frequently ask you to address selection criteria, which barely exists in the American market. Referees are usually listed or offered rather than omitted entirely.
None of that is exotic. It just means advice written for another market will quietly cost you.
If you are not sure what is going wrong, start with what the software does, then move on to tailoring a CV against a specific ad. If you are applying into government, health or education, the selection criteria guides are the ones that will move the needle.
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Not by itself. An applicant tracking system is a database with search and filtering on top, and how it is configured is up to the employer. Some rank or filter applicants against the job ad, and many do neither, with a recruiter opening every application. Widely repeated rejection-rate statistics are usually untraceable to any published study, so treat them with caution.
A single-column document with ordinary headings, saved as PDF or Word unless the ad specifies otherwise. Keep anything that matters out of tables, text boxes, headers, footers and columns, because those are the elements most likely to be dropped or scrambled when a document is converted to plain text.
Two to three pages is normal here, and public sector resumes often run longer. The one page rule is imported from the United States and does not apply. Length is only a problem when the content does not earn it.
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