WTF is an ATS (and why should job seekers care)?
Today when you apply for a job, it’s typically not a human that’s the gatekeeper to landing an interview, but automated software.
When you upload your application to a portal it’s received by an applicant tracking system, or ATS. This tech has made the lives of hiring managers and recruiters a heck of a lot easier. But for candidates, it can be the equivalent of hurling their CV at a wall, if they haven’t tweaked their application to ensure the ATS recognizes their fit for the role. As such, the stock, automated email rejection can feel hugely frustrating.
Most companies today, including over 97% of Fortune 500 companies, rely on an ATS to help them hire new employees. That means that candidates should understand how to make their application stand out in the system. The more recruiters lean on an ATS, the more people need to know how exactly they work. A candidate likely has a higher chance to stick out when they have thought about the other side of the ATS.
We spoke with experts to drill into exactly how an ATS works, and why job seekers should care.
What is an ATS?
In short, applicant tracking systems are software tools used by employers to streamline the hiring process. They help companies organize candidates by collecting information and organizing prospects based on experience and skill set and to filter applications.
It’s helpful along the entire hiring lifecycle, including engaging, interviewing and analyzing prospective candidates. It makes a recruiter’s life significantly easier in that they can easily search and filter resumes and other information, decreasing the time it takes to fill positions with the best possible person.
“We’ve seen a lot of evolution around how people think about applicant tracking systems,” said Ariana Moon, head of talent planning and acquisition at Greenhouse Software. “It’s software support to solve your hiring needs in a more holistic, robust way.”
Hiring managers can add feedback to the ATS following interviews and add notes about each candidate interviewed.
“You can make notes on the candidates, organize interviews, share them across different job roles, and receive good suggestions about which candidates might be a fit for which jobs,” said Rik Mistry, co-founder and managing partner at consulting and recruitment firm Interval Group. “AI is starting to help with processing a lot of the information in a quick time.”
All of this combined ultimately reduces the time to hire and fill critical roles, improves collaboration for a hiring team, and increases diversity across the workforce.
Are there benefits of an ATS for candidates?
The benefits are clear for recruiters and hiring managers. But what about candidates? Experts say that it helps them too by offering a better experience during the hiring process. The best ATS automates many of the repetitive parts of job hunting by providing auto-fill online applications. You can then easily schedule interviews and communicate with recruiting teams. Candidates can also be notified when their resume has been viewed or what part of the interview process they might be at.
On the flip side, though, it can lead to candidates being automatically rejected, never speaking to a human during the hiring process, or even just being ghosted. It quickly can feel like an ATS isn’t that helpful to a job candidate.
“We still have that problem a lot in our industry where you apply and it feels like a black box,” said Moon. “You don’t know when you’re going to hear back because no one is expectation setting with you and every company will have their own commitments on doing that or not.”
Some companies do explicitly state that there’s been a high volume of applicants, but other than that, there is usually not always a clear indicator of where your resume might be. That’s one of the reasons why candidates should better understand how these systems work.
What can a job seeker do to stand out to an ATS?
“Typically, a candidate doesn’t have a massive amount of exposure to the ATS in the same way we would as an employer,” said Mistry. That’s why it’s important for candidates to have an understanding of how an ATS works.
When you apply for a job, the information and materials you provide get uploaded into a database through the system. That database likely has hundreds or thousands of other applications, depending on how big the company is.
Hiring managers can view applications, search for keywords, or have candidates ranked automatically. When the recruiter is sifting through all those applications, they might search for a skill such as “project management” or an education requirement such as “MBA.” If your resume is optimized to include the keyword, it will show up, and if not, it will likely never be seen.
If you aren’t sure what keywords to use, AI might be able to help with a simple prompt: “I am tailoring my resume to apply for this role. Please select and suggest keywords and phrases from this job advert that I can put into my resume. Include any technical skills, software tools, certifications, industry terminology, and soft skills listed in the advert.”
Because it works this way, there are certain ways a candidate can stand out or pass an ATS before it gets to the actual hiring manager or recruiter. It’s one of the reasons why Indeed has curated tips for creating an ATS resume, which includes using keywords from the job description, avoiding complex formatting, and using standard headings.
A job candidate won’t know which keywords a hiring manager might focus on, but it is helpful to use ones that are both on the job description and accurate to your professional experience. If your industry uses common acronyms, it’s helpful to include both the acronym and long-form term in your materials so that your resume comes up whether they search SEO or search engine optimization, for example.
The more information you put, the better, said Mistry. “Any sparseness in the resume is going to translate to less information automatically imported, and therefore less opportunity for the engine to match you with roles that then allow the employer to get in touch with you,” said Mistry. “On our side, we have a percentage likelihood of being a quality candidate for the role. I think the more you can do to populate your profile and resume accordingly, the more likely it is that you’re just going to automatically fall into the right kind of buckets.”
It’s also important to consider how easy it is to pull information from your resume. ATSs have difficulty reading some fonts, which means the software might change your font and potentially affect your resume design. Some examples of common serif typefaces that are best to use include Times New Roman, Cambria, Arial, Calibri, and Helvetica. Meanwhile, standard heading labels for each section are helpful for the ATS to read and organize your information. Additionally, chronological resume formats are more compatible with ATS. It’s also probably better to stay away from extremely graphic resumes.
“I’ve seen resumes where candidates put the certifications they’ve done as images and you have the logos of them,” said Mistry. “You’re more likely to not get those counted compared to a simple bullet point list where the system is able to read that and pass it. It’s good to have a personal touch on a CV, but you don’t necessarily have to have so many graphics that it might confuse the system.”
Besides this, there are also knockout questions, usually in the style of checkboxes or short answer questions, where you will either be flagged or automatically rejected by the ATS. Examples of these questions include are you willing to relocate?, are you willing to travel as part of this job,? do you have X years of experience?
“One of the tools that ATS have are auto reject features, where if there is a hard requirement, like the location one, then resumes will be auto-rejected on not being able to fulfill their requirements,” said Moon. “If you are really clear with what you’re looking for and the person doesn’t meet the criteria, then I would argue it’s probably better for the person to learn sooner than later. And on the recruiting side, it’s a little bit more manageable.”
However, Mistry says that while an auto-rejection isn’t the best feeling, it’s important to ensure your contact information and social media links are up to date in the ATS so that if other opportunities come on, you will be considered for those as well. And where you are able to connect with a human, you should, added Moon.
“Sometimes it feels like candidates versus employers,” said Moon. “There’s a human on both ends and I’ve seen the challenges on both sides. That’s why any time you can try to connect with someone directly, you should. I think it can go a long way because at the end of the day, it is two humans at either end.”