The Great Disconnect

    Keyword Over-reliance: The ATS is described as a "glorified keywords filter" that "don't find talent — they find keywords." This process is criticized for being "madness" and failing to properly evaluate a candidate.

Filtering Out Qualified Candidates: The system is accused of filtering out "innovators, scientists, builders, and creators" because their titles or experiences don't fit a template.

Inability to Understand Context: ATS is seen as unable to evaluate qualifications or "thinking capabilities," resulting in an applicant being mischaracterized (e.g., an engineer being seen as a biologist) due to the wrong wording.

Transferable Skills Blind Spot: A major complaint is that ATS and many recruiters seem "blind to transferable skillsets" and "punish adaptability" by excluding people who could "easily do the job."

  Feeling of a "Crap Shoot": Many feel the job market is a "mess" and that even if an application is "perfect," it's a "crap shoot" whether an applicant will be selected.

Ghosting and Lack of Feedback: A common grievance is that applicants receive no feedback on their applications and are "ghosted" by recruiters, making it impossible to improve or know why they fell short.

The Best Way to Get Hired: A key takeaway for some was that the best way is to use one's network to find a job, especially for older or highly experienced candidates, as navigating the ATS "seems to be a waste of time."

  These following comments directly support Trace Solutions by advocating human review, highlighting the shortcomings of automated screening, and emphasizing the value of human judgment.

Human Review for Transferable Skills:

"The best candidate may be someone that has transferable skills, and this is why a human should be reviewing resumes for match, not just getting filtered out in a generic way. I bring the human back to human resources and this does not seem consistent with that ideal." - 

AI's Incompetence in Evaluation:

"They rely on gpt-like models to characterize a candidate... That mess can't even count letters properly! Not talking about properly evaluating a candidate. Wrong wording in application, and now you're not an engineer, but a biologist, or a schoolteacher..." - 

Recruiting is Broken Without True Comprehension:

"Recruiting is broken. ATS systems don't find talent — they find keywords. They filter out innovators, scientists, builders, and creators because their 'recent job titles' don’t fit a template — while recruiters, many of whom have never worked in the fields they’re hiring for, skim résumés they don’t truly understand. ...Until that changes, the best people will keep being filtered out by algorithms — and the system will keep calling it 'efficiency.'" 

Undermining Professional Review:

"Models didn't come even close to the level of human comprehension, but poorly (or none at all) qualified recruiters offloaded decisions onto these systems and called it a day, instead of improving their skills... The problem is in the approach of the screening itself. I don’t know since when it became hard/inefficient to read 100-200 pages (100 CVs) in a working day for an adult human being, that refers to themselves as a professional." 

Formatting Issues: Formatting (bolding, lines, bullet types) is a significant factor that can "absolutely prevent an ATS from parsing your resume."

Bias Concerns: Questions about whether ageism or bias is "built into an ATS" were raised multiple times.

Data and Privacy: A detailed privacy question was asked about how Greenhouse handles applicant data, comments, and deletion requests across its customer base.

The "Unicorn" Problem: Some believe that companies are "trying to get a unicorn job candidate AND pay the least amount of money possible."