For your sake, DO NOT DO THIS!
There was a point in time (like, 15-ish years ago) where this advice worked but there’s no guarantee this will work now. Some ATS pick up all the text in the doc and convert it to black, so imagine how bad it’ll look when a hiring manager checks the resume out and sees the whole JD posted down. It’s going to look deceitful and you’re not going to get a change because “we don’t want people like this” logic.
Not to mention there’s no guarantee that the ATS will even read pdf’s! A lot of ATS systems can’t!
Getting back on track though. You might get past the ATS but you don’t get a call immediately after you pass the ATS. A PERSON will go through the shortlisted candidates and they will determine whether or not the candidate is a good fit for the job. Recruiters or Hiring Managers will ALWAYS go through the resume themselves and when they see that the resume content doesn’t align with the job? You’re going to get passed on anyways.
Assuming you still get called in for an interview, you’ll still be expected to prove yourself that “yes, I’m a good fit for this job.” So that’s another area where you might trip up. If the person interviewing you finds out that you’ve lied, you’ll probably get kicked out immediately. We’ve had a client who got kicked out of an interview for lying. There’s been plenty of stories of people who got fired immediately, despite long tenures, when it came out that they’d lied on their resume.
Side note: think about how common this ‘cheat’ is. You think recruiters aren’t keeping an eye out for this? They are. They specifically keep their eyes open for these kind of tricks.
TLDR: This is incredibly bad, unethical, and outdated advice and I strongly urge people not to do this. It’s not worth the risk.
Instead, I strongly recommend making use of SEO techniques to increase your chances. You can and should incorporate keywords from the job listing into your resume. Use action verbs instead of “Responsible for” doing things (e.g. Delivered a 6-month project on time instead of “Responsible for leading a 6-month project”) It’s a bit more time consuming to understand what a company is looking for from their candidate but its well worth it.
Also please understand that any job listing is the picture of a company’s ideal candidate. You don’t have to hit 100% of the requirements. You can hit 60% of them but if they’re the most desired skills (which you can tell by how often they’re repeated + how high up they are in the job listing), you’re making a good case for yourself.
Additionally, forget about how many years of experience a company wants from a job. Literally, fuck that noise. You just need to show, on paper, “I can do this fucking job. I’ve done what you’re asking from me. Here’s my proof.”
Side note on buzzwords: be careful on which buzzwords you use. Don’t say shit like “Dynamic business leader” or whatever. Not only does that oesn’t mean anything but recruiters see those kind of terms so often, they’ve lost their meaning. I recommend using action verbs. Like how thebluemerm said: led, managed, maintained, collaborated, delivered, monitored, improved, boosted, reduced, etc.
That’s the biggest advice I can share honestly: SHOW, don’t tell the hiring manager you’re good at your job. Share specific examples (of problems solved, projects delivered, challenges tackled, opportunities identified, tough customers handled) and you’ll show-off multiple skills in one story instead of a lack-luster “Excellent at (skills)”
Sincerely, a professional resume writer
(PS-The resume article linked above is very very solid. I will just say that the one page rule isn’t a hard and fast thing. Let the resume be 2 pages, it’s fine, it happens. Just NEVER let it cross 2 pages. And if there’s like, 3 lines bleeding over to the 2nd page, squish it down to 1 page.)
Some more articles to read if anyone’s interested: 5 popular resume tips you shouldn’t follow, 7 bad resume tips, 3 things you should know about the robots reading your resume but dont, How to trick the robots and get your resume in front of recruiters, there’s a number of threads of reddit to check out including this one, here’s a longer one,
