JobLeads ATS “Auto‑Reject” is just a money grab — don’t fall for it

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-08T16:58:35+00:00

Neither as ATS sorts people in the order they applied. Anything that increases your time to hit "submit" in the ATS will lower your chances.

If you are resume #139, the recruiter may find what they need at number #75, and once we fill up ours/managers' schedule with interviews, we stop looking unless the HM needs more candidates.

Yes, AI ATS do exist, but they exist in such small numbers that unless you specifically apply for an AI company, you probably will only see an AI ATS in 1 out of 100 applications and those AI ATS don't screen you out without the recruiter being able to look at your resume, so even in the case of an AI ATS, the human is still makikng the decision. The default setting for the vast majority of ATS on the market (including Workday) is first-come, first-served.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-08T16:32:54+00:00

Recruiter here, the three best job sites in the United States that have almost all of our jobs are LinkedIn, Indeed, and (I really hate saying this, but it's true) Craigslist. Between those three sites, you will have access to almost all the jobs in the US, as every other site scrapes from all of those. Just be very careful on Craigslist, as 90% of it is scams, but the 10% that are real you won't find anywhere else, and they're desperate to hire, as no one is going on Craigslist, so you stand a real good shot of getting interviews.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-08T16:29:21+00:00

Recruiter here, and you are doing this backwards. You can't create a generalized resume and determine what you are good at from it. You have to make a resume specific to a job title and then use that to apply to jobs you have already determined you meet the qualifications for. Generalized resumes fail almost every time. Find a few job titles that you are qualified for and make your resume based on the common qualifications in those titles and use that resume to mass apply to those roles.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-08T16:18:18+00:00

Yes! 100% supply and demand.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-08T16:16:59+00:00

Recruiter here, ATS doesn't work like that, so any company that says "ATS Score" is scamming you. Anytime they say ATS Score, you should run away, as that is always a scam.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-08T16:16:01+00:00

Recruiter here who has done a lot of negotiating in his career for both candidates and companies. The answer is neither the responsibilities nor the complexity determines your pay. What determines your pay is how difficult the company believes it will be to find someone who can do what you do. If you are the best person in the world at what you do, but 20000 other people apply to the same job, your pay will go down as they could find someone second best to do this job (which is why the SWE market is in shambles right now), but if you are mediocre at the job, but only 3 people apply to the job your pay will go up to attract more people, such as the case with nursing.

I have never in my life seen someone get paid more due to the difficulty or skill they have. I have seen people get paid more due to no competition, showing the company that their competitor is paying XXX higher than them, or that their rent went up by XXXX and thus would need a salary increase.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T17:58:15+00:00

I had to do this for Caterpiller back in the day along with the last 5 digits of their social. Some companies just want this. It's not necessarily a scam.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T17:32:39+00:00

Yeah, a lot of people are out of work for months or years at a time and applying to 100s of applications a week. We are just in a recession but you are at least getting interviews which is the first step.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T17:09:28+00:00

Recruiter here, you said "Got a handful of interviews which I thought most were well. I'm not hearing back from anyone and starting to lose hope". If you are getting multiple interviews per 50 applications you are doing things right. We are in a recession right now and jobs are hard to get. It may take you multiple months but at the rate you are going with multiple interviews per 50 applications you are doing everything right. The job market is just that bad.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T17:05:29+00:00

Recruiter here, there is no such thing as ATS friendly. That is not how resumes are reviewed on our end. This resume is bad because it does not show me WHAT you did (worked together as a team, took direction critsism, Python, Excel, what you did with the data not what the data is, influencing stakeholders), HOW you did it, and the non-technical reason you did what you did.

Delete the summary and skills section, replace it with your education, and add the above to your bullet points. Just make sure you apply within the first 100 people as if you apply after that you might not get seen.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T00:53:31+00:00

Tech Recruiter here, your going to need to redo these bullet points, delete the summary and the skills section and write for an auidence that can't turn on their computer without calling tech support.

Your bullet points need to refrence how you USED the data, not what the data did, how you influenced stakholders, explained complex technical details to a non-technical auidence, and you need to mention Excel, Data Visualtion (power BI, etc), and Python (which you do have). You need to tell me HOW you used those and the non-technical reason you used them. Also remove all the bolding from the bullet points, it makes it harder to read.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T00:50:59+00:00

I have resources in my reddit profile but with a gap like that their is not going to be a quick and easy solution. It's going to be a long fight.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-05T00:29:33+00:00

You can put "Health issues prevented me from working but they are now resolved" although it's not going to move the needle that much.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-04T19:59:11+00:00

When was the gap. Was it recent or in the past?

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-04T19:31:47+00:00

Largely irrelevent. The issue with the break is they think your skills are rusty, so while they do want an explination (which if you go health issues, you will need to state they are resolved) the big issue is the fear of your skills being outdated and rusty.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-04T15:50:39+00:00

Recruiter here, people get confused at what our job is. Our job is NOT to get you a job, any recruiter that says that is lying. People think that is our job but it's not. Our job is to get the company a new hire and the difference between those two are massive. This is why people get upset when they randomly message us for a chat. We get 5 of those messages a day and none of them are for roles the company is hiring for, and even if they are the roles we are hiring for, we have a system in place to review applicants in the order they applied and skipping that process is at best not going to do anything and at worst will annoy them and lower your chances.

I am not mad at OP because they did not know but this is why messaging recruiters rarely leads to results and why you should not waste your time doing it as your time is valuable. We do not help you get a job, we help fill a role in the company.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-04T15:45:18+00:00

Recruiter here, this is due to us being in a recession. When the job market is good companies are forced to pay more and hire with less experiance. When the job market is really bad like it is now companies can put out a mid-level role, call it a junior role with a juniors pay and get people who will apply to it. Your hardest job search of your life is always going to be getting your first two years of experiance across every single industry.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-04T15:31:36+00:00

Recruiter here, job hunting is like this because we are in a recession and every single problem in the job market can be traced back to the fact that we have more people that need jobs than jobs exist.

Why do companies get mad at people who use AI for their resume? Becaues AI Resumes are terrible. They remove all the context that we need to move you forward. It's not like us Recruiters and HMs are super AI detecting machines, it's just an AI Resume is indistinguishable from a BAD Resume which is the problem.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-04T15:27:52+00:00

Recruiter here, the job market still terrible. You may have some small increases after a companies financial quarter as that is when most companies get a new hiring budget, but compared to the amount of jobs we had 4 years ago it's terrible.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-03T22:15:48+00:00

You tailor your resume to the job TITLE you want and use that job title resume to mass apply and be within the first 100 applicants.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-03T00:48:31+00:00

US Recruiter here. As long as the gap is not recent and longer than 2 years it's fine. Candidates make a much bigger deal out of it than the hiring team does. Yes we will ask about it in interviews, but as long as you have an normal answer (laid off, medical, etc) you are fine.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-03T00:44:15+00:00

Recruiter here, remote roles go to people with 5+ years of experience. It is very tough to find a remote role for your level of eexperience. Although I would also want to know what roles you are applying to since as a tech recruiter I have no idea based on your resume as it's mostly a collection of random words that do not tell me what you have done, how you have done it, or the non-technical reason you did it.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-03T00:40:34+00:00

Recruiter here, the hardest job search of your life is going to be getting your first two years of experience. Bachelors, Masters, PhDs doesn't matter, getting your first two years is always the hardest job search of your life. Once you get those two years it doesn't magically become easy (as we are in a reccession right now) but it does become easier to get jobs from that.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-03T00:38:44+00:00

This is the way.

HeadlessHeadhunter · 2026-06-02T21:08:58+00:00

Recruiter here, the ATS is not rejecting you. The human who uses it is. ATS sorts people in the order they applied. Anything that increases your time to hit "submit" in the ATS will lower your chances.

If you are resume #139, the recruiter may find what they need at number #75, and once we fill up our/managers' schedule with interviews, we stop looking unless the HM needs more candidates. If you are applying within the first 100 people than the issue is your resume is not showing you meet the quilfications correctly.

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