The email came in at 9 .02am. Subject line. Regarding
your application. I clicked it. Heart pounding.
This one felt different. It was after a referral.
Someone I respected had put their name on the
line for me. I tailored my resume to perfection.
Triple checked every word. I thought I had a
real shot. It took me exactly 4 seconds to read.
And about 4 hours to stop staring at my screen.
Thank you for your interest in the role at Company
X. After careful consideration, we've decided
to move forward with other candidates. No feedback,
no explanation, just silence where hope used
to be. But here's the part that stung even more.
It wasn't a person who rejected me, it was a
machine. And that night I decided to fight back
the only way I knew how, by building my own.
Hey everyone, welcome back to Dita Niyai with
Mukundan. We're talking about rejection today.
but not the kind that you can recover from with
ice cream and a Netflix binge. This is the cold
algorithmic kind. The kind that arrives in your
inbox without warning and wipes out weeks of
hope in one click. And in my case, it was after
referral as the part that really hurt. Let me
ask you, have you ever had that job, that one
job where you felt like you had everything lined
up? The connection, the timing, you had the relevant
experience as well. And maybe someone inside
the company that you so dream about has been
rooting for you. And then you don't just get
rejected. You get rejected without ever speaking
to an actual human. Today, I want to take you
inside the world of applicant tracking systems,
ETS for short, and show you how exactly they
make these decisions. But more importantly, I'll
share how I built my own AI -powered ATS simulator,
why it failed my resume, and how I turned that
failure into a win. And along the way, I'm going
to challenge you to think about your own career
storytelling. Because beating the bots isn't
just about keywords. It's about making sure that
your story makes it to real human eyes. Before
we get into the tech, take a second and think.
If a machine was judging your resume, right now
would it pass what's the one skill or project
you've never put on paper because you didn't
think it mattered hold on to that we'll circle
back so let's talk about the villain in our story
the ats applicant tracking systems or ats aren't
new they've been around for years quietly filtering
resumes before they even reach a human recruiter
but in recent years they've gotten even more
advanced. Of course they had to, right? Everything
evolved toward the 80s and they've gotten a lot
more ruthless. Picture a digital gatekeeper that
reads your resume like a database, not a story.
It's scanning for specific keywords, formatting
compatibility, file structure, and metadata.
Even it's checking for word order in bullet points.
It doesn't care about your potential. It doesn't
care that you once saved your company six figures
in revenue. or even built a team from scratch.
It's not personal, but it feels personal. And
here's the part most people don't know. Many
rejections in jobs happen automatically. No human
eyes, no manual review. Nobody is seeing it.
Just a set of if -then rules that decide whether
you're in or you're out. I've learned a lot of,
oh, I would say, not a big reader, but I would
say I've listened to a lot of Audiobooks, podcasts,
this is the podcast generation anyway. And all
the famous people, can't remember which particular
person this was, but anyway, they would normally
say like, stop taking it personally and start
playing the game. The game is keywords, then
you need to play the keywords. The game is structure,
play the structure. Complaining doesn't get you
a job. Optimizing your resume or, you know, that
would definitely get you in the door. Let's take
a quick break to talk about rss .com. If you
ever wanted to tell your story, whether it's
about career wins, personal struggles or industry
insights, rss .com is where you start. It's how
I published this podcast and here's why I love
them. Every episode comes with a free transcript.
I can take that transcript, drop it into an AI
tool and see how to make my delivery even better.
The same way I optimized my resume. And here's
something cool. Even if you're just starting
out and you get like 10 downloads a month, you
can start earning Ad revenue. That's unheard
of. I don't think any company does this. So links
in the show notes. I love RSS .com for podcasting.
Oh, did I forget to mention they are amazing
at their distribution network. So they have distribution
ranging from not just Spotify, Apple Podcast.
They also have Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora,
Deezer. And you can also publish. your own podcast
into youtube as well with one with one button
that's it that's how simple that is so coming
back to the show let's look at a night that i
tried to build the ats ai is what i called it
i remember the night that i hit my limit another
referral rejection another email with no feedback
i opened my laptop and i created a new folder
and i started coding in python i didn't just
want to guess what what the ats is doing I wanted
to actually see it. Here's what I used. I used
Python for all the logic and the backend. Streamlit
so that it would be easy to run and share. OpenEI
API to generate plain English feedback. Scikit
-learn, which is a Python -based library to calculate
cosine similarity between my resume and a job
description. PyPDF2 and docx2text to handle the
different file types that candidates use. And
then I tested it on my resume. uploaded the PDF,
based on the job description, and then I clicked
run. And the result? It said cosine similarity
with a 43 .43%, GPT -4 score of 85 out of 100,
and verdict? Fail. My own AI had rejected my
resume. So here's some food for thought for you.
Your best work was being evaluated right now
by a system, not a person. What would it miss
about you? And more importantly, what would you
miss? about yourself. Let's take another break.
If you're listening to this and thinking, I wish
I had an AI assistant to help me figure this
out, you need to check out Sider .ai. It's S
-I -D -E -R .ai. It's an AI -powered research
and productivity tool that lives in your browser.
I actually used it to test some of my parsing
logic for this project. It's perfect for breaking
down complex job descriptions into Actionable
keywords. Links in the show notes. And back to
the podcast. Here's what my resume, which failed,
taught me. Lesson 1. Never assume that your resume
speaks for itself. You might think that your
achievements are obvious. The machine doesn't.
Lesson 2. Keyword alignment matters more than
clever phrasing. Again, this is all an opinion.
You can still be creative, but match the language
of the job description. Lesson 3. Formatting
and structure aren't cosmetic. They're functional.
Fancy designs can break parsing. So I took these
three lessons and I made the changes. I did missing
keywords like Google Analytics 4 and site measurement.
Rephrased, collaborated with product teams to
lead A -B tests with product and marketing teams
using SQL and BigQuery. Quantified wins wherever
possible. Same resume, same person. Just a different
language. Ran it again and lo and behold, of
course, there was a pass. I believe this is storytelling,
but for machines. Every bullet point here is
a mini story. And if you tell it in the right
order, with the right words, it opens doors.
Let's take another break to talk about Riverside
.fm. And speaking of telling your story well,
Riverside .fm is how I record this podcast in
studio quality audio and 4K video. Even when
my guests are halfway across the world or even
on spotty Wi -Fi, if you've ever thought about
starting a podcast to share your own career lessons
or talk about your favorite shows, start with
Riverside .fm. Link in the show notes. One more
thing about Riverside .fm, they have AI editing
as well. So AI can magically create clips from
your podcast. So you can use these clips to promote
your podcast on Spotify or any other podcasting
platform. Actually, you can even share it on
YouTube, right? So that's another way to share
these AI generated clips. These clips could be
as short as like, you know, your TikTok clips,
like all your YouTube shots. That's what these
clips are. And Riverside .fm really helps you
creating it using AI. So back to the podcast.
Here's my challenge to you. This week, take your
resume and run it through a tool. Whether it's
mine or another ATS checker. Don't just look
for a score. Look for the gaps. Look for the
parts of your story that aren't making it through
the filter. Because here's the truth. You can't
control whether a company hires you. But you
can control whether your story ever makes it
to a human. Don't let a machine decide whether
you're invisible. Tune your story for the gatekeeper
so that the human on the other side can finally
see you. Clarity comes from engagement. not thought
you learn by doing so take action see what happens
adjust your resume and repeat the process if
this episode resonated with you share it with
someone who's in the middle of the job search
grind in this crazy job market finding a new
job is really hard right now it's a very unfortunate
situation we are in do remember this like here's
my disclaimer for you yes this AI based tool
to evaluate your resume. It's not foolproof.
Nothing is, right? It's AI at the end of it.
The advice given by it is, you know, take it
as you will. It has helped me and I believe it
will help you. It is my belief, right? AI is,
I would not say it's a hundred percent fact.
That's something to always remember, but it will
make your job easier if you use it the right
way. So try this tool. It's in the, link is in
the show notes. And as always, if you've enjoyed
this, subscribe, drop a review, and I'll be back
soon with another real -world AI journey. But
until next time, stay curious, and most importantly,
stay seen.