WEBVTT 00:00:08.280 --> 00:00:10.140 Hey everyone, welcome back to the Data and AI 00:00:10.140 --> 00:00:13.039 with Mukundan podcast. Today's episode, it's 00:00:13.039 --> 00:00:16.600 close to home. It's about rejection. Not the 00:00:16.600 --> 00:00:18.780 romantic kind. Not even the friendzone kind. 00:00:19.500 --> 00:00:23.440 It's about that cold robotic kind. The one that 00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:28.679 slides into your inbox uninvited. It says... 00:00:30.600 --> 00:00:33.359 Thank you for your interest in the role at Company 00:00:33.359 --> 00:00:36.500 X. After careful consideration, you've decided 00:00:36.500 --> 00:00:39.679 to move forward with other candidates. Yeah, 00:00:39.759 --> 00:00:42.920 we've all seen that. And it sucks. What if I 00:00:42.920 --> 00:00:45.740 told you that in many cases, it wasn't even a 00:00:45.740 --> 00:00:48.600 person who rejected you? And I'm sure by now 00:00:48.600 --> 00:00:52.659 you know how rejections work in companies. But 00:00:52.659 --> 00:00:56.899 I just wanted to give you a deeper dive of how 00:00:56.899 --> 00:01:07.159 an AI -powered ATS... Resume Checker works. Today, 00:01:07.400 --> 00:01:10.799 I'm telling you the story of how I built an AI 00:01:10.799 --> 00:01:14.500 -powered ETS resume checker, why I built it, 00:01:14.540 --> 00:01:18.000 how it failed my own resume, and what I learned 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:20.859 that changed everything. Stay with me because 00:01:20.859 --> 00:01:23.140 if you've ever submitted a resume and heard nothing 00:01:23.140 --> 00:01:27.000 back, this episode is for you. Let's talk about 00:01:27.000 --> 00:01:30.510 the pain of rejection. It's easy to brush it 00:01:30.510 --> 00:01:32.790 off when you're told, yeah, it's not personal. 00:01:33.090 --> 00:01:36.950 But you and I both know, it feels personal. Especially 00:01:36.950 --> 00:01:40.310 when you spend hours tailoring your resume. Editing, 00:01:40.409 --> 00:01:44.810 rewriting, rewording, optimizing, reading the 00:01:44.810 --> 00:01:48.170 job description 20 times. Even using those resume 00:01:48.170 --> 00:01:53.090 scan tools. And still, nothing. For us the most, 00:01:53.250 --> 00:01:57.489 it's just that it's not just the no. It's the 00:01:57.489 --> 00:02:01.150 silence. It's the lack of explanation, the mystery. 00:02:02.390 --> 00:02:06.590 Did someone read my resume? Did it get lost? 00:02:07.530 --> 00:02:12.689 Was it filtered out? Did I get ghosted by an 00:02:12.689 --> 00:02:17.129 algorithm? Now that one question, the last one, 00:02:17.150 --> 00:02:21.409 kept me up. And one night, I just decided to 00:02:21.409 --> 00:02:24.129 stop wondering. I decided to actually investigate. 00:02:27.500 --> 00:02:31.699 What even is an ATS? Now let's break down the 00:02:31.699 --> 00:02:35.060 villain of this story, the ATS. The ATS stands 00:02:35.060 --> 00:02:38.259 for Applicant Tracking System. And it's not a 00:02:38.259 --> 00:02:42.960 new thing. It's been there for a while now. But 00:02:42.960 --> 00:02:45.680 it's gotten more powerful, more widely used, 00:02:45.840 --> 00:02:49.780 and more automatic than ever before. And here's 00:02:49.780 --> 00:02:53.240 how it works. Now imagine a digital gatekeeper. 00:02:54.439 --> 00:02:57.699 It doesn't care how hard you've worked. It doesn't 00:02:57.699 --> 00:03:00.020 care about your GPA or how many side projects 00:03:00.020 --> 00:03:02.780 you've done. It scans your resume for structure, 00:03:02.979 --> 00:03:07.219 keywords, format, alignment. It reads it like 00:03:07.219 --> 00:03:11.060 a robot. Because it is a robot. Your bullet points, 00:03:11.300 --> 00:03:15.039 if not phrased the right way, may never trigger 00:03:15.039 --> 00:03:18.240 its internal scoring system. Now, if your file 00:03:18.240 --> 00:03:21.740 isn't readable, if your text is embedded in a 00:03:21.740 --> 00:03:25.120 weird format, if your font is non -standard, 00:03:26.030 --> 00:03:29.150 I mean, just toss your resume aside. And the 00:03:29.150 --> 00:03:31.330 worst part? You'll never know what happened. 00:03:33.610 --> 00:03:36.189 So, you know, one of these nights I did hit a 00:03:36.189 --> 00:03:38.530 wall. And like I said, I did hit a wall on that 00:03:38.530 --> 00:03:43.009 particular night. It was after getting these 00:03:43.009 --> 00:03:46.610 rejection mails time and again. And I remember 00:03:46.610 --> 00:03:49.330 one in particular. I'd done everything right. 00:03:49.750 --> 00:03:53.879 The resume looked great. Or in my opinion, of 00:03:53.879 --> 00:03:56.340 course. But then clear formatting, tailored language, 00:03:56.659 --> 00:04:00.740 keywords from the job post, and then came the 00:04:00.740 --> 00:04:04.280 gold robotic rejection. Something in me snapped. 00:04:05.659 --> 00:04:09.500 I opened my laptop, spun up a new folder. I said, 00:04:09.580 --> 00:04:14.159 all right, let's just build this thing. My goal 00:04:14.159 --> 00:04:19.720 was to build a tool that mimics the ETS. Not 00:04:19.720 --> 00:04:23.899 just any checker. a tool that thinks like the 00:04:23.899 --> 00:04:29.220 robot. So here's what I used to do this. Python, 00:04:29.439 --> 00:04:32.939 the programming language of my choice. Streamlit, 00:04:33.120 --> 00:04:36.480 an amazing Python -based library for the front 00:04:36.480 --> 00:04:39.759 end. So to have like a cool user interface and 00:04:39.759 --> 00:04:44.259 very easy to build one, Streamlit is a great 00:04:44.259 --> 00:04:49.319 option to do this. OpenAI for the natural language 00:04:49.319 --> 00:04:54.389 insights. scikit -learn for similarity scoring 00:04:54.389 --> 00:04:58.189 so similar scikit -learn is if you're not familiar 00:04:58.189 --> 00:05:03.709 already has been used widely for machine learning 00:05:03.709 --> 00:05:08.009 applications in python so that is a great python 00:05:08.009 --> 00:05:16.350 based library then pypdf2 and docx2 text so pypdf2 00:05:16.350 --> 00:05:26.389 is pypdf2 and docx to text is d o c x 2 t x t 00:05:26.389 --> 00:05:31.389 for file parsing and i wanted to recreate the 00:05:31.389 --> 00:05:36.189 gatekeeper this digital gatekeeper but also add 00:05:36.189 --> 00:05:41.850 something it doesn't have feedback so the ats 00:05:41.850 --> 00:05:44.389 rejects you but it doesn't really tell you anything 00:05:44.389 --> 00:05:48.290 specific and That's why I wanted to build that 00:05:48.290 --> 00:05:52.089 feedback process in. I didn't want to just check 00:05:52.089 --> 00:05:55.810 a resume. I wanted to explain what's missing, 00:05:55.930 --> 00:06:01.889 offer actionable improvements, give people a 00:06:01.889 --> 00:06:07.029 fighting chance. And then I tested it on my own 00:06:07.029 --> 00:06:11.829 resume. I uploaded my resume, pasted the job 00:06:11.829 --> 00:06:17.790 description, and clicked run. The result? A cosine 00:06:17.790 --> 00:06:22.610 similarity of 43 .43%. A GPT -4 score of 85. 00:06:23.370 --> 00:06:29.829 Verdict. Fail. Cosine similarity is just a similarity 00:06:29.829 --> 00:06:33.610 score of my resume and the job description. Right? 00:06:35.870 --> 00:06:39.129 Just seeing how far off it was. And GPT -4 score 00:06:39.129 --> 00:06:42.110 is nothing but the scoring system from OpenAI. 00:06:43.029 --> 00:06:47.620 GPT -4 is the GPT being used by OpenAI. And verdict 00:06:47.620 --> 00:06:51.259 was failed. Yep, my own resume that I'd used 00:06:51.259 --> 00:06:58.079 multiple times for many a jobs had failed. Now, 00:06:58.139 --> 00:07:00.420 not because that I didn't have the experience, 00:07:00.639 --> 00:07:05.000 but because the ATS didn't just see it that way. 00:07:05.899 --> 00:07:09.800 It flagged missing keywords. It said Google Analytics 00:07:09.800 --> 00:07:14.079 4, retail, site measurement. All those were missing. 00:07:15.060 --> 00:07:17.660 I had the experience. I just didn't speak the 00:07:17.660 --> 00:07:23.199 language. I hadn't translated my story into machine 00:07:23.199 --> 00:07:27.000 readable success. And that was the aha moment. 00:07:30.160 --> 00:07:35.600 So here's what I learned. Lesson one, don't assume 00:07:35.600 --> 00:07:39.680 your resume speaks for itself. I thought my resume 00:07:39.680 --> 00:07:43.740 was great. Environment not getting these interview 00:07:43.740 --> 00:07:48.329 calls. But it wasn't that. i just assumed wrong 00:07:48.329 --> 00:07:52.569 that would be my take from this is i wouldn't 00:07:52.569 --> 00:07:55.870 assume that my resume speaks for itself lesson 00:07:55.870 --> 00:08:00.069 two keyword alignment matters more than clever 00:08:00.069 --> 00:08:04.930 phrasing so you're not just talking about the 00:08:04.930 --> 00:08:07.110 keywords that you have in your resume but you 00:08:07.110 --> 00:08:09.350 also need to align it to the job description 00:08:09.350 --> 00:08:17.529 right lesson three is Formatting structure and 00:08:17.529 --> 00:08:21.490 even word order changes how an ATS scores you. 00:08:22.069 --> 00:08:24.990 So whenever you're writing a resume, you need 00:08:24.990 --> 00:08:27.889 to pay attention to your formatting, to your 00:08:27.889 --> 00:08:30.269 structure, is your resume flowing through smoothly, 00:08:30.370 --> 00:08:33.450 and even how your words are flowing in order. 00:08:35.950 --> 00:08:40.629 I realized I needed to be more intentional. I 00:08:40.629 --> 00:08:43.990 swapped collaborating with product teams to Led 00:08:43.990 --> 00:08:46.929 EB tests with product and marketing teams using 00:08:46.929 --> 00:08:50.669 SQL and BigQuery. I had done this. It's just 00:08:50.669 --> 00:08:53.389 something that wasn't getting translated correctly. 00:08:54.309 --> 00:09:01.509 Right? I explicitly listed GA4, which was missing. 00:09:01.629 --> 00:09:05.389 And I added quantifiable wins. I tailored it 00:09:05.389 --> 00:09:08.610 tightly to the job. Yeah, I'm sure by now, if 00:09:08.610 --> 00:09:10.610 you've worked on your resume ever, you would 00:09:10.610 --> 00:09:13.700 know that they want a more quantifiable... And 00:09:13.700 --> 00:09:17.779 maybe a couple of occasions where it was missing 00:09:17.779 --> 00:09:24.820 for me. But I think what I changed was I tailored 00:09:24.820 --> 00:09:30.259 those quantifiable wins more to the job. Right? 00:09:30.620 --> 00:09:34.940 More customized to the job. And then I ran it 00:09:34.940 --> 00:09:39.879 again. Pass. That was the result. Same story, 00:09:40.120 --> 00:09:46.950 told differently. So it wasn't the rejection 00:09:46.950 --> 00:09:51.649 that broke me. This is... It was the feeling 00:09:51.649 --> 00:09:58.409 of being invisible. That my work, my sweat, my 00:09:58.409 --> 00:10:01.470 2am sprint to hit that deadline meant nothing 00:10:01.470 --> 00:10:05.149 to a machine. But here's the truth. If you're 00:10:05.149 --> 00:10:07.129 not tuning your resume to pass the gatekeeper, 00:10:07.289 --> 00:10:11.549 you may never reach human eyes. That's not fair, 00:10:11.649 --> 00:10:16.570 but it is real. You don't need to rewrite your 00:10:16.570 --> 00:10:20.490 life story. You just need to translate it. Translate 00:10:20.490 --> 00:10:23.230 it for the machine. So the human on the other 00:10:23.230 --> 00:10:28.590 side can finally see you. And that's what we 00:10:28.590 --> 00:10:30.009 aim to achieve when we are sending our resume 00:10:30.009 --> 00:10:32.669 across. And I didn't want to make it as a story, 00:10:32.750 --> 00:10:36.009 but this is how it is, right? And if this story 00:10:36.009 --> 00:10:39.289 resonated with you, try the tool. And it is linked 00:10:39.289 --> 00:10:42.110 in the show notes. Upload your resume, add a 00:10:42.110 --> 00:10:46.240 job description, get your score. And make changes 00:10:46.240 --> 00:10:51.820 accordingly. You don't need to start over. You 00:10:51.820 --> 00:10:56.759 need to just tune the signal. Well, thanks for 00:10:56.759 --> 00:10:58.679 listening to another episode of Data and AI with 00:10:58.679 --> 00:11:01.799 Mukundan. If you like the story, share it, subscribe, 00:11:02.159 --> 00:11:04.600 drop a review. I'll be back soon with another 00:11:04.600 --> 00:11:08.580 real -world AI journey. Until then, stay curious 00:11:08.580 --> 00:11:09.879 and stay seen.