The truth about the ATS (redux)

Greg Wyatt • July 9, 2024

I find myself in a busy patch at work, which has taken time away from writing these articles.

As I have around 5x as many subscribers as when this was written, I hope you don’t mind me resharing this article on the ATS.

As you may be aware Applicant Tracking Systems get bad press, particularly from career coaches and CV writers who sell to hope. So this attempts to lend a more objective view.

I should point out things are changing, and AI will make things like automated applicant sifting more viable - but that is only starting to happen now, and will be more effective than what has been alluded to.

And the point of this article still holds - write effectively for a human reader, and you will be ATS compliant implicitly. This article may help.

‘Enjoy’:

Aah, the much-maligned ATS, the systematic terminator of applications.

The impenetrable barrier to your much-deserved job, which only a select few know how to navigate.

Or is it?

Today’s article gives a run-down on how ATSs work, how recruiters and hiring processes use them, and how that may inform your approach to your applications.

This is a long one, and still doesn’t get into the detail - if you have any questions do comment online or by email.

There’s no question how frustrating they can be to apply through, but are they a barrier to entry or simply an administrative requirement?

If you’ve ever used any ERP or corporate software, you’ll see they all have much the same purpose, built from the same foundations for users with equivalent skill sets.

And as a job seeker, I’m sure you have many common experiences of ATS, with the many applications you have made.

They all have common features, built to varying levels of quality and ease of use.

When ATSs first came out they replaced filing cabinets the same way email replaced letters. And as they’ve developed over time they’ve taken on more features, in service of the employer and hiring process.

Today some of the most useful features of ATSs are those of a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) for automated comms and workflows.

Indeed they are probably better described as a Vacancy Management System which applications go through, rather than the other way around.

They ease the administration of internal recruitment functions.

They can be integrated into job boards to make it easier to administrate both adverts and applications, with features that make it easier to communicate, coordinate and arrange.

The common factor is administration, speed and efficiency.

Speak to many Talent Acquisition people about an ATS, and they’ll often say it's an electronic filing cabinet.

Have a read of this Jobscan article which goes through the features you can expect from an ATS.

The article is also symptomatic of how many CV coaches talk about the ATS, in that it makes it a thing of intent, and as such you should take it with a pinch of salt.

I find it strange that ATSs are given a persona - they're just bits of software that are supposed to help employers.

ATSs have no intent, they facilitate the intent of their Employer-users from how they are configured. Not every feature an ATS offers is implemented or even adopted.

Do you use all the features of MS Office, even if they might make your life easier?

What about when Word goes mad formatting your CV (resumes too of course) - automation that works against you.

You’ll see from the article that an ATS can parse documentation, which means to strip the data from an application and standardise it for use in the process.

Parse is a word you may recognise from Bard/Gemini/ChatGPT, whereby AI parses information based on your intent. Have you ever noticed the results are often quite wonky?

In the same way, recruiters can use parsing and other automation to rank and file applications - but we know the results are often patchy and can work against our goal.

When automation consistently works against us, why would we use it?

Many of the automation features on offer simply aren’t great, especially in older platforms.

Of course, it’s true that automation is often used poorly. Another example of bad you’ll likely recognise - is when someone sends you a Toilet Cleaner job and you’re only interested in Solutions Architecture.

Nonetheless, it’s a human choice to use this kind of automation, not a baked-in requirement.

Yes, it is possible for an ATS to score your application so low you don’t get a look in, if it’s configured that way, but unless volume is impossible to manage, that’s not a feature that is necessarily helpful for us.

It’s more likely however that we’ll run keyword searches through such a high level of applications, to form our long list of people to contact.

It would be reasonable to expect a recruiter to at least look at every CV if say there were only 100 applications.

How about 400? 2,000? More?

At scale, many employers move from recruitment by selection to recruitment by elimination. Something automation can help with, if a human decides.

An ATS is there to help recruiters administer applications at scale, and it is only as good as how it is configured and used.

While often it’s worse than that because it is designed for the employer and not the applicant.

[Actually, that’s the whole problem with recruitment right there. Candidates should be the priority throughout recruitment, in service of the recruitment process.

I call this outside in recruitment, compared to the transactional nature of inside out (company first).]

And because ATSs work for the employer, the experience of applicants is often not a consideration. ‘You do the work, and then maybe we’ll consider you.’

It's institutional arrogance.

Workday often gets bad stick. It’s terrible for job seekers.

I saw an advocate for HR systemic best practice say that people just don’t understand its benefits, as a component of a wider system.

He said that the requirement for multiple Workday accounts is down to data privacy and siloed data that doesn’t cross employers.

These may be true points, but they don’t reflect the experience of people those companies may wish to employ.

Were candidates the priority, there are simple solutions - we use Facebook to log into many websites. Why couldn’t you have a centralised Workday account that can be used for multiple employers?

It just isn’t a priority for many hiring processes, who have the money.

Nonetheless, while their design may cause no end of frustration for applicants, their purpose isn’t to eliminate you from the process.

1/ What about automated instant rejections?

2/ What about duplicated data entry?

3/ What about tailored compliant CVs?

4/ What about keyword matching?

5/ Rejected on Sunday at 3am!

(Answers in the next section)

Common complaints and advice around the ATS.

I’d suggest that these are misleading notions because they make an ATS a barrier to pass and not the tool it is.

It’s better to write CVs for the end user, in a way that shows how you meet the requirements of the process; because all of these questions relate to human decisions.

1/ In a volume process, it’s not uncommon to reject every application after the first hundred, when good candidates are already in view.

Alternatively, you may fail a killer question, such as “Do you have a work permit” or “Do you have a degree in HR” or “Do you have 5 years experience in this software that has existed for 3 years”. These are all questions set by the hiring process.

Other reasons too - mainly human-driven.

2/ On an ATS, parsing is often weak and redistributes content in a gobbledygook way. Data entry allows more consistent processing of data.

3/ Tailored compliant CVs are straightforward - don’t use images, columns or tables. Plain text, and simple formatting. Show how you meet the criteria.

4/ What about keyword matching? Any vacancy has keywords associated with it. An application should show how you truthfully meet their essential criteria, using their terminology. While also showing your strengths in the skills, tech and achievements you have.

5/ Likely configured to close the vacancy at a set time and send out auto-rejections.

Most recruiters know that people don’t know how to write effective CVs.

Why should you?

So we will find other ways to determine your candidacy.

For example, you may use “HR Manager” in your CV as the perfect candidate for a “Head of People”, so we will include your terminology in our searches.

For every skill, there are synonyms and applicable skills.

Sourcing is a detailed specialism, because candidate data is hard to unravel.

Of course, many recruiters assume the CV is the candidate, so your challenge is to help everyone see you as a candidate of choice.

What key words could we be searching on and assessing CVs against?

Instead of worrying about beating the ATS, consider how you can help hiring processes see you as a good candidate.

The same principles that increase ATS performance also work for humans, and it’s humans who you want to decide on you. Not just at the initial stage, but at the decision stage too.

Keyword cramming and other tactics designed to boost ATS performance have a resemblance to cheating. These can work against you, with good reason, if integrity is a principle.

Help human readers make a positive decision with a good enough CV and appropriate action that supports your application.

Something I’ll write about another time.

I should point out, that this isn’t a defence of the ATS.

Many are crummy and leave a sour taste.

It’s just that if you are arbitrarily eliminated from a hiring process, it will most of the time stem from a human decision.

Which in my book makes it worse.

Indeed automation should be a force for good.

For example, there is no reason, other than a lack of intent, for employers not to respond to every application when it is a basic feature of an ATS.

I should also point out that things are going to change.

AI has the potential to bring a significant step change in recruitment automation, and that will be another conversation entirely.

Automated interview arrangements, chatbot style pre-application conversations, contract management and so on - all of which should improve candidate experience.

In the meanwhile, next time someone advises you it’s the ATS that’s holding you back, ask

“Where is the money?”

Yes ATSs can be shoddily designed. Yes they can poorly used. And yes the system is stacked against the majority of job seekers.

But it's people who are accountable, not a bit of software.

Thanks for reading,

Greg

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An inverted job search

By Greg Wyatt • October 7, 2026

I realise I've shared this chapter fairly recently, but there's good reason to revisit it. On Friday, I launched a new AI tool - Your Job Search Plan. You can find it here: https://your-jobsearch-plan.netlify.app/ It's based on the inversion principle below: the optimal job search is an inversion of how that job is optimally recruited. In other words, the first step in a job search should be to understand how recruiters and hiring processes seek to fill your ideal vacancy. Then to access all those channels while putting your best foot forward. It connects your applications, your networking, your CV, your LinkedIn profile, and so on, all of which should stem from your professional identity, the context of your career, the market conditions for that career, and therefore the work you'll need to do to boost your odds. One thing I'm pleased about with this tool is how it relates to the other tools and resources on www.bwrecruitment.co.uk/resources . So what seemed abstract, or painful activities without guaranteed outcome, become a practical arrow in the quiver of your search. I hope you find these tools helpful. They are a starting point, rather than a resolution. 20 - An inverted job search So, your broad approach to looking for a job is based on a product marketing strategy. How does this link to your job search and how companies hire? The next step is to recognise a job search is an inverted recruitment process. Whatever you can learn about the actual workings of recruitment, the better armed you are to navigate them. The first way in which this is true is around the routes to market employers take to fill a job. Employers want to fill vacancies in the most economical and efficient means possible. Sometimes they’ll rely on external advice, sometimes they’ll figure out their own way, and sometimes they’ll employ people to do it for them (such as a Talent Acquisition Manager or internal recruiter). When they rely on external advice, it may not surprise you it’s as varied and contradictory as job seeker advice. Take this nugget of wisdom: 80% of suitable candidates are not actively looking for work. By advertising, you’ll only have access to the 20% that applies to adverts. Hang on a minute! Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like the hidden jobs market? Of course, candidates aren’t hidden - much like hidden jobs, the priority is to understand the channels through which candidates are found. These channels directly mirror the channels through which you look for that job: Job boards; LinkedIn; Recruitment agencies; Confidential headhunting; Internal promotions; Secondments; Temp-to-perm hires; Consulting-to-perm hires; Referrals; Networking; Speculative approaches; Careers pages; Talent pools; Candidate databases Every job is different, dictated by principles like supply and demand, confidentiality, reputational risk, wherewithal, budget and capacity. The hiring process of a Software Developer is different from that of a Sales Director. If an employer only hires through an advert - this means if you don’t apply for adverts, there’s no way in which you can be considered for that vacancy. A second way it’s accurate is the notion that what’s true for one may not be true for others. This relates to candidate resentment . You may read online that some recruitment behaviours are signs of a bad employer. Yet, you should always follow the instructions given when applying for an advert or through an agency. They may instruct you to: 1/ Write a CV, cover letter and duplicate it on their ATS 2/ Tell them your salary when they don’t list theirs 3/ Do 17 interviews before reaching a decision 4/ Deliver a 6-month strategy plan by presentation 5/ Or any other request deemed unreasonable by Career Coaches, Job seekers, or people otherwise uninvolved in that process What some consider red flags, others will deem acceptable practice. It becomes your choice to play the game or not. Either follow their instructions or step away. You don’t have to apply if you don’t want to. In a similar vein, if you hear a hiring process has a preference, or if there are gaps in their employment armoury - these might be biases you can lean into. The hiring manager loves Arsenal Football Club and is biased towards people who love the same? Now might be the time to switch allegiance, if you can fake it or make it. They love a one page CV? Apply with a one page CV. You know the hiring manager of an advert with 400 applications? Give them a call - they might give you an unfair advantage. Poor practice from the employer, yet these are problems you can turn into opportunity. A third way in which this is true is by comparing inbound and outbound activity Outbound activity is where you go to your prospect (phone calls, messaging). Inbound activity is where the prospect comes to you (job adverts, content). Yet an outbound activity for a recruiter is an inbound activity for you (you receive phone calls and messages). While an inbound activity has you getting in touch because of their advert or content. When we talk about optimising your work, whether your CV, profile or interviews, it has to give the process what it needs. How can you be more discoverable, so you receive more relevant calls and messages? How can you improve your return on applications and your outbound messages? What about inverse non-recruitment? A brilliant, if strange question, with the same answer. When networking, going direct, seeking to become a referral, doorknocking, or other, what is the inverse of that activity? How does that person find or recommend people, if they become aware of a vacancy? How might they see you as a person to solve their problems, even if it isn’t a vacancy? You do these activities because of how they might help you and because of the benefit the other party experiences. What’s in it for them? If there isn’t anything in it for them, why should they help you? For each and every stage in recruitment, there is an opposed force, as candidates and the hiring process meet each other. It’s rarely an equal force, because every vacancy has supply and demand, resource, skill level, biases and intent at play. This is why each type of role has a different method of looking for work. Executive vacancies typically prioritise headhunted candidates, with fewer public adverts. Here the priority shifts towards building relationships with, and being discoverable by, Executive Search recruiters. If executives rely mainly on job boards, they may never think to focus on more suited channels. If you can learn what the other needs for that process to be successful, you can deliver the same. Speak to peers, speak to hiring managers you know, speak to recruiters, speak to former job seekers. How have they found work, and how would they recruit for your roles? Research your market to find viable employers, to identify recruiters and to build your network. Then execute an appropriate strategy to access these channels.

Hierarchy of Pain

By Greg Wyatt • September 23, 2026

I had an aborted conversation at a networking event on Tuesday. It was about a problem vacancy a fractional people lead was looking at. Her client had instructed various executive search firms and none had produced a viable candidate. It seems the consistent approach was to match CVs to job description - pureplay transactional - and none were candidates that met the goal of the vacancy. You see that organisational pain that the vacancy heals wasn't defined by documentation, and therefore if you rely on that documentation to find candidates, it's happenstance that you come across someone viable. It's such a common problem, and when I 'fix' problem vacancies, it's invariably something that isn't described which was holding back a successful hire. The irony is this shouldn't be a hidden pain - presuming it's appropriate to share, it should be front and centre. What complicates modern recruitment is that, instead of better specifying vacancies, both sides of the hiring fence increasingly rely on LLMs to produce documentation that shaves the edges off. And as a result a candidate that has extensively healed the hidden pain a vacancy might even remove the evidence from their application in a bit to better match an advert or job description. The more transactional recruitment comes, particularly through reliance on technology, the worse this problem becomes. Probably not an issue for business as usual vacancy, but when a vacancy has impact, standard process of "5 CVs by Friday" will invariably hold you back. The chapter below is from A Career Breakdown Kit , my guide for navigating a skewiff employment market. It may be for job seekers, but the problem and solution are directly mirrored by the hiring side. It's taken word for word from the book, so some of the content is interconnected with other chapters. You can read most of them for free in the Jobseeker Basics newsletter. Hierarchy of pain This chapter reflects on how buyers make decisions, how this is reflected in hiring and why it matters in how you put forward your CV, application, interviews and other messages. If you’ve ever encountered sales in your career or life you are likely familiar with the concepts of Features and Benefits. The product is what is proposed. Features are what it does. Benefits are how it helps. However there are actually three other components in this hierarchy that make up commercial messaging. Value is what the benefits mean to you. “Sell the sizzle, not the sausage” - the sizzle isn’t a benefit, if you don’t like sausages. Outcomes are the tangible long-term results from using that product or service. “Sell the picture frame, not the screwdriver” - or rather what’s in the frame. Why does it matter? The idea being these peel back the layers of the onion to help a potential customer understand exactly What’s In It For Them. Yet, it may not matter whatsoever if your brilliantly put together message doesn’t achieve one element - show how you heal their hidden pain. In that frame example above, this might be a photo of a loved one, no longer with us. The photo is for our memories and feelings. The frame has to be right, to commemorate them properly. While it needs to be mounted well, using tools that make the job easier. Could you market that loss to sell a screwdriver? Hopefully not, though the message might be, “For memories that matter,” instead of "High Quality Screwdriver". It's a common pain many share, yet not one you might discuss down the DIY shop. Early in my career I had a lesson on hidden pain and its importance. I recruited an HR Manager for a high growth business whose requirement was for someone with broad experience in a similar environment. I presented an excellent candidate who was only available due to the shutdown of her employer - she had to stay to the final day to manage the process well, which limited her availability to start work. That was the only reason I explained her current situation to this new employer, because redundancy management wasn’t on the job description. She got the job! On day one of her new employment, her role was made redundant and she was offered a retention bonus to shut down the local site - everyone was to lose their jobs. The hidden pain here was redundancy, something not even mentioned to me during the vacancy briefing, and something I never broached with Julie. IIRC, there was no mention of it during the interview process either. Perhaps that’s an extreme example, but it does show what can happen behind the scenes. And if you happened to be out of work, a fixed term contract with a retention bonus might be quite appealing. Were you to apply to that vacancy, it would be important to highlight your redundancy experience - customising your CV might even have worked against you! So how does this hierarchy fit within your job search? You are the product, with your next employer on a buyer’s journey. Your features are what you offer. In a CV this is a combination of job titles, qualifications, skills and areas of experience. It’s also your salary requirement, where you are based and other elements like Visa status and working arrangements. Get these right and a little luck might mean they are all you need, considering that these same elements are what we source and filter on. I expect in this market you’re in competition with many people that offer the same Features, so the differentiator is what you bring to the table uniquely. The contexts of your career combined with how you helped, your impact, your achievements, and what the outcomes were. Related chapters: Principles of a Good CV Should I customise my CV? LinkedIn profiles that get found LinkedIn profiles that convert These are all resources that will help you communicate the benefits of your experience, the value you bring, the problems you solve, and the outcomes of these solutions. As for the hidden pain question, which in many vacancies isn’t articulated, how can you unpick hidden? Go back to why vacancies are recruited. How did they come about in the first place? They only fit into two piles - new and replacement. However these two piles have many subcategories relating to the problems they solve and the pain they heal. Researching the company can help. Inside knowledge definitely helps - it’s one reason good agency recruiters will be a valuable ally. But this knowledge isn’t always available, and sometimes the employer may not even know! I always come back to the principle, “You can’t be all things to all people.” And when you try to do this, you appeal to no one. It’s one reason why using LLM style AI to customise CVs is so problematic. The output is necessarily same-same because it’s a probabilistic determination of what you want based on an aggregate of data. It’s why, when recruiters receive a volume of AI augmented CVs, they all look the same. Your ‘good enough’ core CV ( Should I customise my CV ) leans into your strengths. While you might tweak it to meet the essential requirements, in the language of the employer, this should naturally support your greatest strength - the unique fingerprint that is your career. The downside of relying on customisation against vague, and often misrepresentative, adverts is that you can deemphasise and even remove your biggest achievements. The same achievements that would have helped you stand out. If your application doesn’t heal the hidden pain of a vacancy, it’s either because you have not defined your strengths correctly or you aren’t that close of a fit with the actual needs of the vacancy. An example to show this pitfall in practice. I caught up with a friend yesterday who has resigned from a post that was missold to him. His career is based on commercial acumen and enablement in a field that is heavily focused on risk management and compliance. So he’s already unusual in a good way (though his CV didn’t show this). On day one of his new job, he encountered a literal unexpected disaster. While these things happen, and he managed the situation effectively, this proved a consequence of the business culture and strategy. These problems kept coming up and his functional area in the business needed a complete overhaul at executive level. Rather than the commercial enablement picture they painted, they needed someone who relished chaos - a master of disaster. Completely the opposite of the career Simon wants. This isn’t something they could publicise in their recruitment process, for reputational reasons, yet it was a fundamental baked-in aspect of the role. I’ve no doubt Simon’s CV is a match for their job description. Yet he is not a match for their job. What if they’d seen CVs of people who’d leant into strengths of healing dysfunction? What if he’d leant into his strength of enablement? He may not have left his previous job for something he went on to regret. If you’re sceptical about how crucial hidden pain is in recruitment, think about your own hidden pain when applying for jobs. What’s going on in your life that impacts which roles are ideal for you. The same points you might not divulge when you’re just trying to get back into employment. Perhaps you've even experienced the pain I did when considering a hardware purchase. How did that pain inform your buying decisions? It’s no different for employers when they consider the pain and problems inherent in their vacancy.