Finance News AI screening, Applicant Tracking Systems, ATS resumes, job applications, job seekers, job title matching, keywords for resumes, resume format, resume optimization, resume visibility Vedant February 17, 2026 0 Comments

Applicant Tracking Systems: After his partner was rejected from 20 jobs a week, man tests ATS, results shock many – here’s what he found

A man shared on Reddit that his partner lost her job and started applying for new ones. He said she sent 15–20 job applications every week but got no replies at all — not even rejection emails. He said he is a developer, so he decided to check how ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) really work. He spent 8 months testing thousands of resumes using real hiring platforms like Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS, and Taleo.

He found that the popular claim that “75% of resumes get auto-rejected” is not fully true. Instead, he said the real issue is worse — most resumes are simply never shown to recruiters at all. He explained recruiters search resumes in ATS using keywords, job titles, and experience filters, like searching in a database. If a resume does not match the exact search words, it stays hidden. He clearly said this means job seekers are not rejected — they are invisible inside the system.

ATS works like keyword search

One shocking result he found was that resumes that used the exact job title from the job posting got 10.6 times more interview callbacks than those that used different wording. He said ATS systems match words very literally. For example, if the job title says “Senior Product Manager,” using a different title like “Product Lead” reduces visibility. He also found that 99.7% of recruiters use keyword filters to sort applicants, which makes exact wording extremely important.
Another major finding was the “pretty resume problem.” He said creative resumes often perform badly because ATS systems cannot read complex designs. He said two-column layouts confuse ATS because the system reads text in a single top-to-bottom line, which mixes words incorrectly. He also found icons and emojis break resume reading because ATS sees them as strange characters instead of useful information. He said unusual section titles like “My Journey” instead of “Work Experience” make ATS unable to understand the resume sections.

Keywords must be balanced

He discovered many people put their contact details in headers or footers, but most ATS systems ignore those areas, making candidates impossible to identify. His tests showed resumes need about 25–35 relevant keywords to get strong ATS matching scores. He said using too few keywords reduces visibility, but using too many triggers AI keyword-stuffing detection, which can harm the application. He also noted that 83% of companies now use AI screening, so old tricks like hiding keywords in white text no longer work.

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Another surprising finding was about date formats. He said mixed formats made ATS calculate wrong work experience, sometimes showing 8 years as only 3. He said the most reliable format was Month Year style, like “Jan 2020 – Mar 2023.” He also found that .docx resumes work best, because they are read correctly by all systems, while PDFs sometimes fail due to technical issues. He said currently only 2–3% of job applications lead to interviews, but many failures happen due to simple technical mistakes, not lack of skills. He concluded that job seekers don’t always need to be the best candidates — they first need to make sure their resumes are visible to the system.

FAQs

Q1. Why do many resumes not get replies from companies?Many resumes stay hidden in ATS because they don’t match exact keywords or job titles recruiters search.

Q2. What is the best resume format for ATS systems?

A simple single-column resume with exact keywords and saved as a .docx file works best.