The letters stand for Applicant Tracking System and companies build/buy them to record candidates applying for jobs. Depending on how feature-rich the ATS is, it's possible for it to store millions of candidate records/resumes over many years, including phone screen and interview notes, time-stamping each submittal for each job at said company. Why should you care and why am I still talking about it? Well, if an internal recruiter sees a candidate applying for multiple jobs spanning multiple disciplines over a short period of time, and you haven't been promoted, changed companies or added educational credentials to your resume, how seriously do you expect to be taken? "But I have a broad range of interests and skills," you say. Great!! Pick the top 2 jobs (max 3, if they are similar) that you're most qualified for, apply for them explaining why you are qualified and interested, and then safely assume that unless something about your skill set changes substantially, you're done for awhile.
I don't mean for this to sound discouraging but mass-submitting (flooding, jamming, spamming, etc) won't help your cause. At best the person reviewing resumes will overlook the fact that you've applied to every job opening they have and give you the call if you're resume suggests you are the absolute PERFECT person for the role. At worst, they may move past the PERFECT resume and jump to the conclusion that the human capital attached to it isn't specialized enough or lacks in decisiveness and self-awareness.
My encouragement is to apply only to positions that map to both your professional qualifications and your interests, remembering that throwing anything 'at the fence and hoping it sticks' smells desperate. Play to your strengths...vinny
Interesting post. Are ATS employed only at the largest/Fortune 500 companies or do you seem them widely used?
ReplyDeletewidely, because HR departments are accountable for tracking the value of their recruiting initiatives, justifying to accounting where they're spending money and defending the spend based on ROI. An ATS can be as simple as a manual Excel spreadsheet that an internal recruiter creates or as robust as an automated system that logs every applicant for every position.
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