The truth about the ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems)

Have you ever been told that you need to “beat the ATS”? 

Here’s what an ATS actually is and what it does. 

Then you can decide for yourself if you need to beat it or if you need an ATS Optimised CV. 

What is an ATS – It’s a system that tracks applicants, it’s all in the name: Applicant Tracking System. 

It tracks which jobs applicants have applied to, it tracks their stage in the hiring process, it tracks which candidates have been interviewed, it tracks interview feedback, it tracks offers and it tracks rejections. 

It basically tracks stuff. 

When you apply for a job, the ATS creates a “candidate record” that includes your CV, your answers to any application questions and any information the ATS has been able to pull from your CV, this could be contact information, education or sometimes skills and previous employment. 

This is what is known as “parsing”. If your CV has fancy text boxes or a weird layout, the ATS may struggle to parse some of the information. 

Your candidate record is then attached the job record(s). 

Now some ATS platforms use relatively new functionality whereby it will scan your CV and match it against the job description and give you a “suitability” score. 

Some are really basic and just look for keywords, some are more advanced and use NLP (natural language processing) to look at how well the CV matches against the job description. 

The recruiters can then see that your CV has a score of 72% for example. 

But here’s a few things you need to consider: 

An overwhelming majority of companies do not have this functionality in their ATS or even have it switched on if they do. 

Those that do, most recruiters do not trust this scoring. I’ve seen candidates that have scored really low still get interviews and job offers. 

A “low score” doesn’t mean you’re auto rejected. It’s simply a score for a recruiter to look at. 

Most job descriptions aren't even a reality of the actual requirements of the role. They're mostly garbage, meaning any score is meaningless. 

In UK & Europe, GDPR regulations do not allow companies to make automated hiring decisions, even if AI evaluates applications a human must review and confirm this. Similar regulations exist it most developed countries. 

Now here’s the thing I’d love everybody to remember. 

There are hundreds of ATS systems. 

Very few of them will assign a score to your CV. 

Those that do, will vary in how they do it. There is no universal ATS score.

And it will still be reviewed by a human. 

So with this in mind, ask yourself this one question: 

“How can a single person or platform claim to be able to write you an ATS friendly CV or a high scoring CV?” 

They can’t. 

So don’t worry about the ATS. 

Just write a CV that clearly tells your career story and achievements. 

If you do need help with your CV, get my free CV template and use my free CV review tool.

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