White Inking

A student of mine the other day told me of a new phenomenon happening in New Zealand with students submitting their CVs into ATS for job applications: white inking.

What white inking means is that the students submit their CVs with a whole load of key words in the background of the document (for example, filling the entire background via the header or footer in Word), but coloured white so as to be invisible to a human reader, while remaining entirely visible to an ATS system.

What an interesting idea. When I come to do my ATS research, I will try to find room to check whether this works.

I strongly suspect that it won't work, but that is purely because even though the candidate might get into the short list, their application will still be reviewed by a recruiter before they are called to arrange an interview. Unless they have the required skills, they won't be seen.

Sam