Something I love and hate about recruiting is that there’s no formal education. There’s not one set of courses or curriculum you can take to be great at hiring. No PhDs in recruiting. Instead, each person brings a wealth of knowledge from their own paths and experiences to create hiring processes and systems. That’s why they’re all a little different and, frankly, what makes consulting in this industry so fascinating. 

At the same time, we have all these people looking for a job who weren’t formally taught how to get hired, either. We learn about “work” at home from our parents, and that education pipeline is anything but universal. For example, my education about job search was severely limited by the fact that no one ever did that in my family. The primary people in my life were my grandmother and mom. My grandmother spent 25 years working at the same place and my mom spent 20+ years in the military. They never looked for jobs. Not once. 

My formal education about the job search was from blogs and college career counselors who hadn’t looked for a job in 10+ years. The advice on job search was mostly threatening. “You’ll never get a job if you skip this step,” the blogs read. They claimed you would not get the job over things as simple as the stock of your resume paper or not sending a thank you note. It made the entire process feel like a ticking time bomb, not some investment in my future. I had no idea what was really happening. 

Breaking Down The ATS Illusion 

Now that I’ve worked in the recruiting industry for over 15 years, trained teams on every step of the candidate experience, and done more demos than I can count - I see how easy it is to buy into the hype surrounding them. The bad job search advice is always trending and there’s no part of the job search that has more mythical features than the ATS (or applicant tracking system). 

I cannot count the times I have had a candidate describe the ATS like The Wizard of Oz. At no point have they realized this is an illusion, just like the tiny man behind the curtain in the movie. Instead, this technology is talked about as if it has magical powers. Candidates fear it will automatically reject their resumes. They write resumes in a special code for this machine to “read.” Alternatively, they navigate very real worries about getting rejected for who they are, the color of their skin, or even their name, not as some imagination of rejection, but with research and data that shows getting a job is an uphill battle.  

But the myths around job search are not really about the machine or the ATS at all. The lore and absolute untruths are an emotional response to a real challenge: carrying the emotional weight of having everything on the line while we do a task we don’t know how to do, AKA look for a job. Oh, and managing real time rejection from applying to a million jobs. Of course people are making up stories about what happens. They’re trying to explain away this feeling of worrying they aren’t enough. Most folks don’t go to therapy to figure that out, though. Instead, they post rants on LinkedIn. 

What Happens To Your Resume After You Apply?

Personally, I find the truth far more helpful. Well, that and therapy, but that’s a different blog.

So what actually happens to your resume after you apply? Well, first you should know there’s not one answer. Some companies don’t even use an ATS and filter everything through an inbox (yes, really). That’s a red flag in itself. However, there are some basic best-in-class workflows and my friends from Greenhouse let me take a look behind the scenes at their technology to show you, the job seeker, step-by-step.  

1. You click apply.
2. The “thanks for applying” email you get 3 seconds later is an automated template. Don’t get too excited about it. It means nothing except, “we got it.” 
3. Just like any savvy shopper who has a lot of options in front of them, the recruiter is going to filter and sort based on criteria. If you get an auto rejection, it’s probably because of one of these filters. But, know this: a person manually sets the rules based on job deal-breakers like location. They can’t hire you anyway if you don’t meet the deal-breakers, so don’t even worry about that. This is why you should always carefully answer every question in a job application: it might be a deal breaker. 
4. Assuming you have none of the deal-breaker qualities, your resume is now sitting in a queue on the recruiter’s dashboard until the job post is taken down or they get a message from the manager saying, “let’s see what we’ve got so far,” and they take a peek at what candidates have applied. 
5. When the recruiter decides they have a decent applicant pool or the date they set to end the job post listing has arrived, the recruiter will open up the queue and look at all the applicants (typically in the order they were sent simply because that’s easier - so yes, early application does matter).
6. Now, they filter who they want to advance to an interview. What do they filter by? Completely up to them. Sometimes this is automated and other times it is manual, but the best systems are designed to keep humans in control while giving them more reliable ways to sort through the volume. What makes Greenhouse unique is that their search isn’t just a keyword match, they also include synonyms so you don’t have to focus so much on using the perfect keywords. The system can help the recruiter know you’re right for the job. 
7. If it’s a yes, you will hear from them.

Then, lots of other stuff that doesn’t matter because you just got an interview! You’ve officially moved on from being just an applicant in the ATS to a fully fledged candidate for the role. Next, it’s time for the world of interview prep, which will hopefully lead to you landing a job.

Still, others are getting frustrated sending endless applications while wondering if there are technology barriers preventing them from getting hired. Those frustrations are real, but at the end of the day, a real human is still making the call. It’s easy to get distracted by the worry that comes from buying into the myths, so please be sure to share this with friends and family who are looking for jobs so they know what happens to their resume after they click apply.

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More Posts In This Series:

• Addressing Candidate Fraud: Finding The Fakes
• You Need Guidelines For Using AI In Interviews
• From 50 Applications To 1 Interview: Can This Change the Odds?