Applicant tracking system (ATS) rejected my resume: Is it true?
Spoiler: yes and no!
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Let’s discuss this together. As the job market — especially in tech — gets more competitive, I revisited one of the most talked-about (and feared) topics: the ATS, or Applicant Tracking System. Because, according to an urban legend, the ATS can automatically reject a resume and squash a candidate’s chances of getting a job.
Why do I care about this issue so much? Honestly, I’m tired of watching my friends panic whenever they hear, “Your resume won’t make it past the ATS.” These stories pop up so often. So, instead of answering every friend asking, I put my thoughts together.
Why should my voice be relevant?
As you know, I’m the founder of The Global Move. But, before that, I founded CV Compiler (read about it on TechCrunch), which later got acquired by Resume Worded. So, I’ve been working with resume parsing and machine learning since 2018.
This write-up is relevant because I relied on other specialists. To add a bit of extra tech expertise, I spoke with Oras Al-Kubaisi, a software engineer with over 25 years of experience and the founder of Resume Yay and Job Description AI. The conclusions you’ll read here resulted from our conversation.
Since we’re here… Besides reading this article, one good recommendation for dealing with ATS anxiety is to follow the fantastic Amy Miller, who worked for Google, Microsoft, and is now at Amazon. Amy started a YouTube channel explaining ATS and sharing practical tips for job seekers.
What is an ATS?
Simply put, an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a tool companies use to manage job applications. It acts as a large database of candidates and includes features to help HR teams post jobs, track hiring progress, gather feedback, and manage recruiting-related tasks. ATS software also supports collaboration and allows managers, team leads, and other decision-makers to stay involved when picking profiles.
In short, it helps streamline the entire hiring process. When you upload your resume through a web app, you’re probably funneling it to an ATS.
An ATS is like a CRM, but for recruiters.
There are dozens of ATS solutions out there: Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, TalentHR, and so many others.
And there is NO one standard that works for all the ATS solutions. Referring again to the CRM world, if Salesforce has some feature, Zoho might have it, too. But the realization — or how the software engineers built it — might be entirely different.
It makes sense that companies go looking for ATS solutions. Employers move to ATS platforms that offer features like applicant tracking, candidate management, scheduling, and analytics in one place because it makes their hiring process simpler. As companies grow, they need ATS platforms that can handle more complex compliance and regulatory requirements. They might need, for example, to offboard an employee or to sign documents.
How or why they might choose one ATS over the other is entirely up to them. Maybe an HR manager already knows of a system. Perhaps they just Googled for a solution and one provider had done a fantastic SEO jobs. Many ATS satisfy most of the needs a company might have.
The ATS has some logic and criteria to it. HR managers can config it so that it scopes down to certain candidates only. I’ll talk about that soon enough.
Like a CRM, an ATS is a business tool with multiple criteria and various stakeholders, and its primary goal is not to auto-reject candidates. Yes, that’s entirely against what some myths claim about it.
How could auto-rejection work?
Some ATS platforms can assign a Matching Score to your application based on how well your resume aligns with the job description. This is typically a simple algorithm that checks for overlapping keywords, titles, and skills. If your score is too low, your resume might not be shown at the top of the list — or even shown at all — especially when recruiters are flooded with candidates. In some setups, employers can set a minimum score to automatically filter out resumes below that threshold. While that technically counts as auto-rejection, it’s not personal — it just means your resume didn’t hit the right buzzwords for that specific role.
Is it legal to automatically reject candidates?
That’s a fair question — and the answer is: not without oversight. While it’s technically possible to automate parts of the hiring process, recent legal frameworks in both Europe and the U.S. are putting strict guardrails around it.
The impossibly long-winded GDPR addresses automated decision-making, including automated candidate rejection, in Article 22. It grants individuals the right not to be subject to decisions based solely on automated processing, if those decisions produce legal effects or results that affect them. This means that fully automated rejection of candidates without human intervention is generally prohibited under the GDPR. This means employers must make sure that there are humans involved. If you read my recent post where I discussed how recruiters find their candidates, you’ll still realize that there’s always a human involved.
In the European Union, the EU AI Act (Article 10) classifies the use of AI in employment decisions, like hiring or rejecting candidates, as “high risk.”
(a) AI systems intended to be used for the recruitment or selection of natural persons, in particular to place targeted job advertisements, to analyse and filter job applications, and to evaluate candidates;
This means employers must meet strict requirements around transparency, data governance, and human oversight. In short, decisions that significantly impact people (like rejecting them for a job) can’t be left entirely to automated systems without human accountability. This is exactly what GDPR stipulates.
In the United States, New York City’s Local Law 144 (also known as NYC 144) went into effect to regulate Automated Employment Decision Tools (AEDTs). Under this law, employers using AI or algorithmic tools to evaluate candidates must conduct an annual bias audit, inform candidates ahead of time, and certify that the audit results are publicly available. The law aims to make certain that automated tools aren’t driving unfair or discriminatory decisions behind the scenes.
However, it currently applies only within New York City. Also, I can’t think of a single time I came across a biased audit. And, allegedly, companies should inform candidates that the audit is pending.
In California, proposed legislation wants to regulate the use of Automated Decision Systems (ADS, the cousin to the ATS) in employment. This means the legislation will require employers to carry out impact assessments designed to prevent discrimination. Very close to what NYC mandates.
Even if this legislation is not in full action or has no strict penalties, I’m pretty sure job seekers will have some sort of legal protection.