It should be illegal honestly.
ATS doesn’t know that a fisherman and a “catcher of fish” are the exact same thing. ATS doesn’t know that knowing the overarching concepts is more important than the software itself. ATS doesn’t even recognize a lot of resume formats. You pretty much need to know exactly how it works or get really lucky.
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Private companies can do whatever they want.
Edit: Jesus Christ the lack of critical thinking skills from the people replying to this is honestly alarming.
In an age where most job applications are submitted electronically and instantly they are the only way for recruiters to handle and organize high volumes. ATS suck but it would be way worse without them.
Yeah, sadly, no company really cares. I work in advertising, and there was a time in college when my classmates and I went over our resume formats. Because graphic design was such a big part of the job, we’d make our resumes all pretty and stuff. Almost immediately, we couldn’t use them, lol.
Maybe that is not a bug in these systems but a feature.
With a system like this you immediately filter out candidates who don’t know how to optimize resumes to get through screeners.
It’s shitty but I don’t see how to avoid it. If not AI they give that pre-filtering task to a cheap HR intern.
OK, we will as soon as we stop getting hundreds, if not more, applications for EVERY SINGLE JOB we put out there. 98% of the applicants won’t even be qualified for the position.
Our company only has 200 employees and 1 HR person, we don’t have time for all the idiots applying for everything and anything.
As long as it is also illegal for candidates to apply for a job they are not qualified for. Otherwise I have hundreds or thousands of resumes to go through manually where 99% of them are garbage.
The resume system as a whole is flawed to begin with, because the system incentivizes you to lie.
Maybe you just need to play the game the way it is meant to be played instead of complaining about it?
What are companies to do? Have one person filter through 1000 apps?
If it is a recruiter then “that’s their job” but a hiring manager? Let’s be real…
I do understand what you’re saying. I think the issue is that the system for applying for jobs is sucky in general. I’m so tired of seeing all the “Say this, NEVER say this” resume and cover letter videos. I just want to write what I did. Why do I have to use jargon and buzz words? Why do I have to over complicate it? And when I get to the interview, why are you applying so much pressure on me? Am I secretly applying for a Navy SEAL position? Will I be doing interrogations at GITMO? And to actually address you post OP, I get what you’re saying, because if the AI is set up to essentially favor the people who use buzz words, is that really a good system?
I’m not from the us, so I’m not exactly familiar with ATS, but in general, private companies can filter candidates however they want. It’s their time and money, and if using software makes it faster, I get why they’d do it.
You think a human quickly skimming through every resume can’t make stupid ass mistakes too? They can be plenty stupid themselves, and sometimes they just don’t give a shit.
Actually, if they get too many resumes, a human probably won’t even bother checking your resume at all. At least the ATS in theory would be able to check everything.
Idk, I think ATS software is getting scapegoated because people are looking for a convenient reason for why they’re not getting callbacks and want to blame ATS software for them(even though they don’t even know if the employer is using ATS). It’s an imperfect filter but so are humans.
Spoken like someone who hasn’t been a recruiter before. Until you have been on the other side you really can’t understand.
Also, for discussion’s sake, if modern day recruiters didn’t have ATS then they would have to track several dozens of job openings with several hundreds of candidates manually. Do you really trust anyone to handle such a high volume alone or are you going to at least supply them with tools (ATS) to manage that volume? You don’t want recruiters working only with email and a notebook, you want them to have the shit they need to do the job.
You’re asking recruiters to actually do their job and or not be shitty people