Zero to Hoodie Substack

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Zero to Hoodie Substack
Why YOU Aren't Getting Interviews

Why YOU Aren't Getting Interviews

🧠 Beating the ATS: The Real Boss Fight of Cybersecurity Hiring

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BowTiedCyber
Jun 16, 2025
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Zero to Hoodie Substack
Zero to Hoodie Substack
Why YOU Aren't Getting Interviews
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🧠 Beating the ATS: The Real Boss Fight of Cybersecurity Hiring

Why Most Resumes Get Auto-Rejected and What to Do About It
by Evan Lutz - Founder of BowTiedCyber


✋ Before You Hit "Apply" on Another Job...

You’ve spent 60 hours studying protocols and attack surfaces.
You finally learned how to use Splunk and cracked your first PCAP.
You polished your resume and submitted to 23 jobs this week.

But… no callbacks. No interviews. No rejections.

Just silence.

It’s not you.
It’s the machine.

Literally.

Meet your first real opponent in cybersecurity: the Applicant Tracking System (ATS).


💥 Most People Lose This Fight

The ATS is the invisible wall that stands between you and your first tech job. It's not a hiring manager. It's software — and it’s ruthless.

Over 75% of resumes get auto-rejected before a human ever sees them.

If you don’t beat the ATS, nothing else matters — not your skills, your projects, or your potential.

That’s why we teach ATS-dominance as a core pillar of the Zero to Hoodie Bootcamp.

We’ve taken entry-level students with zero IT background and built them into full-time cybersecurity analysts in 90 days — but only by reverse-engineering the hiring funnel and optimizing every layer, especially the resume.

You don’t need to “stand out.” You need to survive the algorithm.

Let’s show you how.


🔒 The ATS Doesn't Care About You — Just Your Text Blocks

Most people try to write a resume that looks good to humans.

Bad move.

The ATS strips your resume down to a raw database of fields — skills, tools, job titles, dates. It’s not reading your story. It’s not appreciating your layout. It’s parsing raw strings.

If your resume isn’t:

  • One-column

  • Free of tables, icons, and graphics

  • Stuffed with exact match keywords from the job description

…it’s going to the digital trash.


📣 Want the Real Template + AI Resume Coach?

Inside the Zero to Hoodie Bootcamp, we don’t just give you a resume template — we give you:

  • AI resume optimizer that flags missing ATS keywords

  • Real-time feedback from hiring mentors

  • Weekly resume lab sessions with our instructors

  • And a 1-click GitHub + Portfolio checklist to match

90 Days to Hire-Readiness. 36 Weeks to Market Mastery.

Apply now and get past the bots for good.

🔗 Join the Zero to Hoodie Bootcamp

Now keep reading to actually get interviews again:

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