The truth behind applicant tracking systems

- I'm Andrew Seaman Editor-at-Large for Jobs and Career Development here at LinkedIn Today, we are demystifying the hiring process, but more specifically, the tech behind it, applicant tracking systems. I'm joined by Daniel Chait, the co-founder and CEO of Greenhouse, one of the most popular applicant tracking systems out there. And now, many of you have heard about ATSs over the years and during your job search. I know this topic causes a lot of frustration and even anger. I see it on the platform. So today we're pulling back that curtain and showing what actually happens with your application, at least when it comes to Greenhouse. We want you to leave this conversation feeling freed actually, to spend your time and attention on what will actually move the needle in your job search. So during this conversation, make sure you drop your questions in the chat. We'll be taking them live. And I know a lot of you are probably going to want to rewatch this event, and don't worry about that, we'll have a replay of this conversation on this page. So with all that taken care of, let's get to it. Daniel, thanks so much for joining us. - Thanks for having me, I'm really excited to be here, and it's an important conversation that I think a lot of people are interested in, so it'll be great to get into it. - Yeah, and so obviously we do want to get into, and we're going to show people literally what goes on behind the scenes. And I guess, briefly, can you just explain what an applicant tracking system is? And obviously, Greenhouse, they're all different. There are a lot of different options out there, but at the end of the day, what is it? - Yeah, so every team or every organization that's doing work, they need software and systems to track that work. So if you're an accounting team that's tracking bills and invoices, you know, you have a ledger or a accounting tool. If you're a sales team that's tracking sales opportunities and conversations with prospects, you've got Salesforce and tools like that to track it. Well, for recruiting teams, they use what's called an applicant tracking system. Not surprisingly, that's the system that they track applications in. And so oftentimes there may be hundreds or even thousands of people applying for jobs at a company. They need a centralized place to put that information and to collaborate around all the work that goes into making a hire, whether it's collecting applications, interviewing people, scheduling, and then ultimately, you know, making decisions. And we're going to get into how all that works and what all happens. - And also, it's important to say applicant tracking systems have been around for a while. So obviously, you know, AI adds another element to this, but they've been around for decades. - Yeah, basically once everything moved into computers, you know, it used to be that this was paper. You know, people would send in resumes and you would take 'em out and put 'em in a file. And then as soon as everything went online, not that long thereafter, people started building the first kind of applicant tracking software in the '80s and early '90s. And then through the early part of the 2000s, as the internet came around, and I know we're going a little bit back in history, but that's where these things came from. Now online job applications are the norm. It's not people sending in resumes. Those still have to go somewhere. And so the applicant tracking system has been around literally that long. And to your point, with the advent of AI and online remote work and a whole bunch of things, the technology is changing and adding a lot of capabilities. But at the core of it, it's the same thing that's been happening forever, which is people collecting applications and tracking them through the process. - Yeah, and it's now in a computer. - You got it. - And so we want to look under the hood. So you sent along some screenshots about what happens once an application gets into Greenhouse. So again, like the disclaimer this is what happens with Greenhouse. There are other ATSs out there. But I know a lot of people, they're familiar with Greenhouse, they see the little icon a lot of times when they're dealing with applications. So can you walk us through the experience? - Yeah, absolutely. So if you're a job seeker, you're applying, as you said, on the careers page of a company that you're interested in. You'll fill in your name and email address and maybe upload your resume or LinkedIn profile. Where does that information go? It goes into the applicant tracking system. And so from there, the candidates often lose, they don't know where they are, they don't what happens happens. And so I think giving a view of here's what the team that's processing your application, interviewing you, here's what they see. So that's what I think we're going to queue up now and go through those steps so that we open up the hood and see what's underneath it. So here's a centralized dashboard in Greenhouse. This is a typical screen that you would see if you were hiring, in this case, a software engineer. And as you can see along the top of the screen, there are a breakdown of how many applicants have applied to this job. And down the right-hand side of the page, you can see the different interview stages that this organization is using to process those applicants from when they first come in, to application review, all the way down to being interviewed and hired. - [Andrew] Yeah, and you also see where they're coming from too. - [Daniel] Yeah, so that's kind of the starting point. And there's a bunch of data and a bunch of details that they want to look at that aren't as relevant to a job seeker. But if I'm a recruiter, of course I'm spending 24 hours a day in this product, like, they're looking at all this stuff. But as a job seeker, the kind of main thing you need to know is when you apply to a job, you come into a set of applicants that the team is then going to try to look through and identify who they want to hire. - [Andrew] Got it. So then the next step would be actually looking at the candidates themselves. - You got it. And, you know, depending on what's happening in that particular job, they may be able to just go through every candidate in the order they came in and look at each of them. But often that's not the case. Often, especially nowadays, there are way more applicants than they can get to. And so they're not able, if they get hundreds or thousands of applicants, to look through them all in the same order that they came in. And so the first thing that many hiring teams are going to do is they're going to start to filter and search through that list of applicants to try to find the ones that they want to focus on. And so what we see here in the screen is exactly that. They've done some searching on certain skills and certain criteria that they think are important for this particular role to try to narrow down that list of applicants to the ones they want to focus on first. It's not to say they're not going to get to the rest of them eventually, but they want to focus on these first. And as you can see, they've now got it down to a list of, in this case, 45 applicants that match this filter. And that's going to be a starting point for this recruiter on this day to look to this list of applicants. - [Andrew] Yeah, and they could also, like you mentioned, they could skip this option, they could go use the filter. The other thing is that some recruiters, if they start looking at candidates immediately as they come in, they might just take one at a time, right? - That's right. And so, you know, kind of the first thing to say before we even get too much further is if you're a job seeker, you need to understand that you may come into a job that already has hundreds of applicants. And, you know, I like to give the analogy to a deli, 'cause when you walk into a deli, you take a number or the ticket, you kind of know where you stand in line. That's often not the case when you apply to a job. And so sometimes you apply to a job, and you think like, "Okay, when am I going to hear back?," not even knowing that there may be 500 people in front of you who've applied earlier. And so it can feel really frustrating to, you know, "Hey, I applied, why aren't they getting back to me?" And this is what's actually happening, you know, the team that's hiring for this role is doing their part to try to find, of all the people who have applied, who are the ones that are going to be most likely for them to want to spend time interviewing and get the job. - And also, I think that goes back to the point of like when people see that a job might have 500 applications, like you said, it doesn't mean that there's 500 good applications. And if you are right for that role, that's what you actually, you're like, "Okay, great, there may be 500 applications, but maybe only 10 of them are serious applicants." - You got it. And, you know, these days, candidates, job seekers, are using their own automation often to magnify the number of applicants, so that's just going up and up. And so, yes, employers are certainly feeling, many of them, overwhelmed by the number of applications. But what they're trying to do is focus on the ones that are the most likely to benefit from an interview and ultimately to get the job. And so that's where really the work happens on the recruiting team side is to try to, like, do the best they can on that search to narrow down and filter. And what that means for a job seeker is if you're applying for jobs that you're not all that well qualified for, they may just pass you by entirely. - Yeah, and obviously once you say, "Okay, we got 45, let's look at each one of those," let's take a look at what recruiters see on the screen. - [Daniel] Yeah, so here's where you go from kind of being a number to being an actual candidate. And you saw, you know, in the previous page, we had a bunch of stats about who's in the pipeline and how many matches there were. Well, here's what an actual candidate might look like to a company using Greenhouse. In this case, they've anonymized the candidate. So Greenhouse customers have the opportunity to take out identifying information, like your name, so that they can do an unbiased look at just the skills and experiences that you bring to the table. So it may just say "Anonymized candidate." Other companies may actually see your full name there. But in any event, they're going to look through basically what you might imagine as a resume and a profile to identify does this person have the right work experiences and skills in their background for us to merit a closer look? And as you can see along the top of the page, at this point, they've got the opportunities to either decide to move ahead with you or to pass on your application and to reject you. At which point they'll automate an email back to you saying, "Hey, we've taken a look at your application." And they'll write the text of it, but to the effect of, you know, "This isn't something we're going to proceed with." - Yeah, and also, so this screen actually, like, when people say, like, "Oh, you know, my name kind of signals that maybe I'm from a marginalized group or something like this, this sort of says they're only paying attention to your experience and your skills. - Yeah, that's one of the big things that people are concerned about is, you know, am I being assessed fairly based on what I've done or are there other things that are factoring in that's making the process less fair? And so you're never going to be perfect, but we're always trying to make the process better and more fair for our customers so that ultimately it benefits job seekers and the hiring companies alike by just finding the best person with the best skills for that job. - And then, obviously, once they say, "Okay, we're going to move this person forward," then, like, they'll see, and I think we have an example of that screen up, they'll see actually what the candidate's information is. - Yeah, so you got it. So this is just the beginning of the process that we looked at. So far, you've applied, you know, they've kind of gotten down to a list of people. Okay, now what happens? And here's what you see as a hiring team as you're looking at a job overall. What you might see here on the screen is, you know, a number of different stages that candidates are going to go through. And each of the candidates now is an individual person that I know that we've spoken to, we've had some conversations with, we've done some assessment, they've had a chance to learn about the company, perhaps. And we move them through these stages of the process from the opening application through the different interviews and ultimately hiring. So the company will look at a screen similar to this, configured for their own jobs, of course, and they'll be able to see each of the candidates in the process and manage it that way. So at that point, you sort of stop becoming a number and start becoming more and more known to that company. - [Daniel] Yeah, and this is also where that tracking part comes in, in the admin tracking system. - Yeah, it is tracking, right? And so this is literally, like, how the sausage is made. There's just a workflow, and every company and even often every job will have its own distinct workflows of how they're going to interview you and what steps you're going to go through. It may include things like asking you to demonstrate your work experience with a writing sample or a code test or some other experience. It may be an interview with a team or an individual. It may be giving you the opportunity to ask questions of the company. So all these parts of the process have to be tracked, they have to be scheduled, and the company is going to move you through them. And this is where it's happening from their standpoint. - [Andrew] And this is actually, we're seeing, I think, where the interviews are scheduled and things like that in this slide? - [Daniel] Yeah, so this is now focused in on, again, one individual candidate who's in one of those stages. And here's where the team that's recruiting them has the opportunity to schedule interviews and sort of review that applicant's, you know, what are the tasks that need to happen right now and how do they manage? And one of the things that we always try to do at Greenhouse is ensure that the companies have an easier time of doing the things that candidates care about. And the things candidates care about more than anything, number one, hearing back. Like, "If you're not going to move forward with me, please just let me know." So at every opportunity where you see a button that says, like, "Reject this person," "Don't move forward with this person," Greenhouse is going to pop up a window right there to that recruiter saying, "Here's an email template you can send them and let them know." And the other is just like quickly scheduling the next step and just moving, you know, through the process. - [Andrew] And, yeah, and then, obviously, you know, hopefully you'll get that like, "Hey, let's move this to the next round." And this is where that comes into play, right? - [Daniel] Yeah, so here we see the screen of an actual candidate who's now been through a number of interviews, and you see the feedback that the team has collected through those different processes. And in Greenhouse, not in every system, those show up as these, like, icons that you can see there on the screen with the thumbs up and the star. Greenhouse is kind of famous for this Strong Yes idea when you find a candidate that really lights up. But you basically see all the feedback that's been collected on that applicant. And this is really where now the hiring team is down to maybe a short list of two or three people, and they've collected really a full dossier on that person, a bunch of notes and some high-level kind of scores about the different factors that they care about, what we call a scorecard, and then the company can make a decision about who to give an offer to. - And then I guess the question based after all this is, obviously, you know, I so appreciate you going through all this, and there's so much frustration and anger from a lot of job seekers, and I think a lot of it just comes from a lack of transparency. Like, they submit their applications, they don't know what happens. Why do you think there hasn't been much transparency? - Yeah, and first, let me just say before I answer that question, rightly so, you know? Job seekers, it is frustrating out there right now. And so I have a ton of empathy for people who are just doing their best to try to find a job, you know, and do right by their family and develop and grow their career and all these things. And they're just frustrated. It's just a black hole. And kind of there's the AI tools out there that companies are using and jobs are using, kind of making it all worse, not better. It's tough. So I just wanted to start there. Like, I absolutely understand why people are feeling that way, and it's just a factor of how the environment and how the job market has shaped up. But I think part of what you're asking of why don't they have that level of transparency. I think that's changing a little bit. But historically, they weren't the customer. So if you're a vendor, you're selling to the company that's doing the hiring. And so you think very deeply about the things that they're asking you for, 'cause that's going to make them decide to buy your product or not. And the job seekers were kind of an afterthought there. Back in the days, again, to rewind, when, you know, you sent your resume in in paper, you know, that's just kind of what happened. And it was only recently that we have now, like, real-time connectivity where people expect, you know, a live answer, they want to know my status. And most of the other things I do, I have that. If I'm in any other kind of queue, like, I kind of know where I am. And like, the job seekers are a little bit behind. - And I guess, and we have a question here that I think is a good segue, which is from Gigi in the U.S. "What is the motivation behind using an ATS? Is it better than human parsing and identification of good candidates?" So, like, basically, and I think I hear this from a lot of people, is like, is using an ATS better than just sending in that paper resume? - As a job seeker, should you apply that way? Is that the question? - Yeah. - Yeah, I mean, you know, as we saw, the company is going to track all the stuff in the system. That's how they work. That's what their process involves. If you apply outside of that process, like, say, if you send an email to the hiring manager or a LinkedIn InMail to someone at the company to try to get their attention, like, sometimes that can actually work. And I will tell you, like, I have actually responded to people that send a personalized, highly targeted, very useful email about a job that they want at my company. So people do that, and it works, but the very first thing that happens is they're going to put you into that applicant tracking system. Why? I don't want to lose track of you. I want to make sure that, you know, you're scheduled along with everyone else, that I've got the notes captured along with everyone else's, and that all the process works as it should. So there's not such a thing necessarily as staying outside of it, but people certainly do sometimes try to apply outside and around it. And I think if you're thoughtful about it, it can help, but, you know, it can backfire as well. - Yeah, and actually, and we talked a little bit about this in the examples, which is bias. And I think this is something that we've seen, like, we've seen lawsuits pop up and things like that in various, you know, different cases. And this comes from someone in the UK, and basically, it's what about, you know, bias? Humans have bias. But also, we hear a lot about, like, technology. So should people be concerned about bias? - Yes, we are very concerned about bias at Greenhouse, for sure. Because let's face it, it is a fact of the human condition that people make decisions in predictably imperfect ways. And those show up as bias against various groups of people. It can show up different by the individual that's doing it, because we all bring our own thoughts and emotions to how we make decisions. So that's just a fact of life. And I don't think anybody would question that. I think the thing that we try to do at Greenhouse is like, okay, then what? What are we going to do about it? And so, as you saw earlier, what we can do as an applicant tracking system is, number one, help with various features that make it easier to overcome those biases. For example, blocking out your name when you're first evaluated so that the attention is focused on the skills, or putting a structured hire process in place so that everybody is asked the same questions and interviewed the same way so that you're compared fairly. Those are things that the software can do to help overcome those biases. But at the end of the day, you know, it's humans that are making these decisions, and I think we all need to recognize that, you know, humans are only so, you know, humans are going to be imperfect. - Yeah. No, that makes sense. And we're getting a lot of questions about tactical issues like keywords, websites that scan resumes and cover letters. So what does the keyword search look like for a resume and cover letter? Like, this is from Emma. So, like, should you worry about keywords? Should you worry about that on your resume, your cover letter? What should people do about that? - Yeah, so I think there's a lot of talk out there about how do I game the system or how do I avoid being penalized by the system? And I think what I would say, I can only speak really on behalf of Greenhouse, and we're a popular one. We're not the only one. But, you know, with Greenhouse, the software that's going to do that searching that we saw earlier, where the employer wants to filter down to the people they're looking for, they will put in sort of skills and experiences that they're looking for. And Greenhouse is not just going to, like, blanket match that keyword alone. It's going to expand that to the set of skills relevant to that and try to help our customer, not surprisingly, do the best job of, like, finding the right talent. And so I think people get a little worried, like, oh, if it says, you know, Java, but, you know, the thing says, you know, JavaScript, is it going to filter me out or something? And I think, you know, the product will do the job of really identifying what skills relate to the text that they type in. So I'd be less worried about that and more focused on does the resume and the application material you're submitting do the best job of reflecting you that it can. And I think the folks out there that are thinking, "Oh, there's like an ATS score, and how do I grade my resume to get, like, the highest ATS score," at least at Greenhouse, that is not how it works. - Yeah. And also, I assume, like you said, all applicant tracking systems will work a little differently, so it's like you don't know what usually a company's using. - That's true. And I mean, sometimes as a job seeker, you can see, like, if you go to their page, you see, like, "Powered by Greenhouse," like, you'll know that it's ours. But that doesn't really tell you how that company is going to filter and look for the right, you know, the talent that they want. So you might have two companies using Greenhouse hiring a similar-sounding job, let's say, marketing director. But the way they think about that job might be very, very different. And these people may have a list of skills that they're going to focus on, and those people may have a completely different set of background skills, experiences that they want. And there's no way on the outside to know that other than by reading what they've written in the job description. So there's not like one magic score that Greenhouse is going to compute for everyone that says, like, how good you are, and we rank you A to Z that way. It's just not how it happens. Every company has their own calibration for each job, and then they run their own, you know, search process based on what they think is best for that role. - Got it. And so it's good to know that people don't need to do like Java, JavaScript, all that stuff, so yeah. And then so we have a question here from Mary in New Hampshire. "Do AI resume matching tools really improve ATS results? My job scan scores are high, but I'm not seeing more callbacks or interviews than with my ChatGPT-edited resumes." - Lots of stuff in there. So look, I think let's just start with the basic thing. In this day and age, like, everyone's going to use tools to build a good resume. And so if that's ChatGPT or like other AI tools. But use them to do the best job of representing you. And I think if a tool is telling a job seeker that, "Hey, we know the secret formula to get you through Greenhouse, like, that's not based on how the product actually works, I'll put it that way. And so yeah, the resume should be clear, easily formatted. All the old resume advice still applies. It should focus on what you did, what kind of results you drove. It should be easy to understand. It should look like most other resumes visually, so it's not, you know, difficult for people to understand who are busy. But I think trying to get too cute with that and saying, like, "Oh, I'm going to use some AI to read the job description and then make my resume look just like it in hopes that we trick the computer," like, I just think that's not really going to help you. - Yeah, and I guess it's worth sort of diving into the idea about, like, how technology is developed because, and I think we've chatted about this before, is that, you know, there's the idea of, like, people, and this is what I alluded to in the beginning, like, people want to kind of game, not game the system, but they think there's this wall that they have to get over. But you build the technology, I assume, to sort of match how the humans would want to hire, right? - Yeah, that's right. And again, I don't think of them as trying to game the system. I think most job seekers kind of feel like the system is gaming them. Like, they feel like this isn't working for me. I need a way through because I want a job. And so most job seekers aren't doing these things to try to, like, cheat and get a job they shouldn't. What they're trying to do is put themselves in the best position to get a job that they really want. And so I totally appreciate that, and I understand that. Where I think the breakdown happens is, you know, often because the numbers are what they are, and there's more applicants for a lot of jobs these days, that people think, "Oh, if I just multiply the number of jobs I submit, if I just submitted 100 or 500 or 1000 job applications, surely I'd get one of them." When in reality, you know, if you're applying to jobs that you're not an ideal fit for, and if you're also applying to jobs that there's lots of other great applicants for, the odds are just going to be stacked against you. And so unfortunately, there's no better advice than focusing on jobs that you're really very well qualified for, putting your attention into showcasing your best self for those jobs, and then doing a lot of it. - Got it. And another question that we're getting a lot about is this from Steven in California. "Are cover letters effective? Are hirers seeing cover letters as helpful, or as determents, like a third page of a resume?" How should people think about cover letters? - I think that varies. I think there are different ways that different hiring teams look at cover letters. Some skip them altogether. Some really will stand out. So I wouldn't think that there's, like, one simple answer to that. I think if you're, you know, I'm a traditionalist. I'm used to writing cover letters. I'm used to writing thank-you notes, and so that would be my approach, but I don't think it's going to be a one-size-fits-all answer. - And in the Greenhouse system, is it like an attachment that they open? Or like, is it- - Yeah, they'll see that. So in that screen we saw earlier where they were looking at the resume, they'll see a resume and a cover letter. So they will see it if they're reviewing you, but how closely everyone's going to necessarily read it, what they're going to maybe judge about that, like, that's very individualistic to that hiring team, as it should be. I mean, it's not, you know, Greenhouse has like 7,500 customers of all types and sizes all over the world. So we don't dictate to each company how they should hire or how they should assess applications. We're the system that processes those applications. And so what that means, again, as a job seeker is there's not just a one-size-fits-all answer. It's less about the applicant tracking system, it's more the question is, how do employers look at cover letters? And the answer is, well, everyone's different. - Yeah, and the next thing I do want to talk about is sort of how the system works a little bit, which is, is there anything in the system that makes the hiring decision or decides who gets interviews? Like, I think that's what a lot of people think is that the applicant tracking systems are saying, "Interview these three people, hire Bob." - I do think people think that, and even worse, what people think is the applicant tracking system has somehow made a decision about me that carries across jobs. That I've had this experience as a job seeker, people think where I've applied to so many jobs and I've gotten rejected from so many of them, often very quickly, that it must be the applicant tracking system who's, like, you know, got a black mark against my name and I can't ever get a job. That is very much not how it works. And again, you asked earlier, you know, who are these things built for? Like, if you think about what I'm trying to do at Greenhouse for the companies that use the product, we're trying to help them make really good decisions. And so we want them to see highly qualified applicants. We don't want to black those out or anything like that. So yeah, absolutely, the computer is not going to be making a decision on behalf of the employer. The employer's always going to be making that decision. And what the tool can do is help them manage the process and kind of get through the workload, but it's ultimately the job of an individual human or team at the company looking at the different applicants and making some decisions about who to move forward with. - Got it. So there's no option, basically, for the recruiter to say, like, "Automate this process for me"? - No, there's not. There's a couple of things that will happen. So companies might put in what they call, like, a knockout question. So let's say I'm hiring to fill a warehouse, and one of the requirements of the job is, you know, I need to know if you can lift 25 pounds. You know, I need to know, if you're a nurse, I need to know if you have the appropriate, you know, nursing credential. So they may put those questions in as a yes/no at the beginning of the application process. And if you fill those in saying, "No, I'm not able to lift that amount of weight," or, "No, I don't have that credential," then you might get an automatic rejection saying, "Hey, you applied but you don't meet the qualifications." And so companies can set up, at the very, very beginning, these, like, basic qualification in-and-out what we call knockout questions. But beyond that, it's very much a process of evaluating each applicant. - Yeah, and actually, one of the questions we just got, and there are a lot of them, about getting knocked out immediately. So like, you know, when you answer voluntary questions, if, you know, you put in your age, things like that, will that happen? And I guess those are kind of two separate ones, I think, because age is a big one. - That's a big one. So sometimes people do have this fear. There's often a big part of the form that's asking demographic information, age, military veteran status, things like that. And people sometimes wonder, does that affect my chances? And I want to be super clear about this. In Greenhouse, when you fill in that type of information, it is not associated directly with your profile. So that screen we saw earlier where they're looking at you, they can't see that information. That information is only used in a statistical way, often to fill in a government report and say, you know, to be able to prove that they're not violating equal opportunity laws. But it's not like they're going to look in and say, "Oh, this person, you know, said they're a military veteran or that they're a man." So that information is often collected by employers for statistical purposes, but it is never be able to seen by anyone who's looking at you as an individual applicant. - Yeah, and I guess that also touches on something, applicant tracking systems, they also meet regulatory guidelines. Because I know my mother used to work in personnel a long time ago for healthcare, and you, you know, she had to keep every applicant, like, every resume, everything. Like, you know, you would have to go, like, into a storage facility to, like, look it up sometimes because the state or the federal government wanted to see that record. - Yeah, and there's a bunch of laws, and it's by state and sometimes even by locality. It's also global. You know, Greenhouse is a global company. We have customers all over the world, and different parts of the world have different laws. And so yeah, we take great effort to make sure that the tool helps support our customers to apply, whether it's, you know, GDPR, California Privacy Laws. And even, you talked about use of AI, there are local laws in New York, in California, and a growing list of places that govern how they are and, more importantly, how they're not allowed to use software algorithms, artificial intelligence to actually make decisions about candidates. And so, to stay on the right side of those laws also, you know, Greenhouse and applicant tracking systems generally are going to avoid that automated decision-making process and also do the record keeping and collecting that you talked about. - Got it. And obviously, you know, you're not a job seeker, you're an executive, but like, if you were, let's say, a few years out of college, you were applying for work, you were out of work, what would your approach be to looking for a job and applying? Because, you know, when you were sitting down to your resume, filling out applications, how would you do that? - Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing to do is, you know, put some time into making a resume that really does the best job of reflecting your capabilities and shows the best of you. So if you've had work experiences, make sure that they show the results. Make sure that they're focused on quantifiable outcomes, like all of that type of advice. Make sure it's easy to read. And then make a list of companies and start applying to jobs, but do it in a way that maximizes each job application. Put a little bit of yourself into writing a cover letter if it's there, writing an email, if you know people at the company, try to find connectivity there, and then do a lot of it. And I think, you know, submitting those, you know, applications, just the odds are you're not going to get any one job, but if you submit enough of them, you know you're going to increase your own odds. I think where people take that advice maybe too far is they go, "Oh, I should submit more. Great, I'm going to automate it. I'm going to hand it over to AI, and AI's going to submit 100 on my behalf while I'm asleep." Which sounds attractive, and I don't blame anyone for doing that. But the reality is that oftentimes the quality and, like, the selectivity that it's going to use to choose those applications is going to be a lot lower than if you were doing the research yourself. And so it may feel good to blast out 100 and kind of do spray and pray, but it's often not really helping your odds. Because as we saw, the first thing the employers are going to do is search through the applicants and find the relevant ones. And so if you're not applying to relevant jobs, it's really not going to help increase your odds. - Yeah, I think also what's in there too is like even if you do the spray and pray method, like, let's take the ATS out of it, the recruiter would likely, you know, the minute they open your resume, they're going to, "Okay, no," and then just sort of go on to the next one. - Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, you're not going to fool anyone into hiring you for a job that you don't want and that you're not good for. So if, you know, even if you do manage to kind of throw your resume in the hat at, you know, 100 companies, if they're not jobs that are more likely to hire you, that you're really relevant for, it's just going to add some noise and not really going to be a lot of help to you, which ultimately is what job seekers want, is they want to do things productively to try to get a job. - Yeah, and I guess then the next question is, and I hear this a lot, is like, "Okay, I create a resume, I'm getting nothing back from it." And then, you know, there are people who will say, like, "Oh, I'll write you an ATS-optimized resume," or I will, you know, people will send away to services and do that. So, like, is there any benefit to that? Is there, you know... There's definitely a difference between a good and a bad resume, but, like, you know, is that something people should look into or? - Yeah, I mean, you know, everyone can use a little bit of help. So, you know, some people want to use a friend or a parent, you know, or a mentor at work or whoever it is to try to help you write something, that's fine. And if you're the type of person that wants to hire a service to help you do that, like, all the power to you. I'm sure there's good ones out there. But the point isn't that these services have some, you know, unique in, or that they have, you know, kind of cracked the code on the ATS system. It's that, hey, if they're a good writer and they can help you write, like, that sounds like a useful approach. - Yeah, so go for, like, a good resume writer, not one that's like, "Oh, I could do the ATS thing." - Yeah, I don't think these things that are like, "Oh, we're going to sneak keywords in, or we're going to figure out how it all," like, it's just... I think they're sometimes preying on the hopes of job seekers by misleading them about what actually happens behind the scenes. And that's part of why we're doing this conversation, is to show behind the curtain, like, here's how it works. It's all pretty straightforward stuff. There is no magical, you know, man behind the curtain that you can trick. - Yeah, because when there is sort of opaqueness or just complete blackouts, like, that's where, you know, people can say, "Oh, this is what you don't know is happening behind the scenes." - [Daniel] I think so. - And then when it comes down to the actual sort of nuts and bolts of a resume, so like the experience section. If you were writing a resume for yourself, would you focus on the experience or more your responsibilities, like, or your accomplishments? So is there one that you think performs better than the other? - Yeah, I mean, again, I mean, you're talking more about how, you know, employers make decisions and how do people typically read resumes than anything technical. But I think employers generally are impressed by, you know, quantifiable accomplishments. So if you say, I worked in sales for five years, that's maybe not as convincing or as powerful as, you know, I exceeded my quota by 27% three years in a row. Right, so putting in those quantifiable metrics is always a good idea. Talking about the specific kinds of impact that you had is always going to help. - And I want to get to a member question, but before I do that, I think there's something that I want to touch on, which I hear a lot, I'm sure you've heard a lot, putting white text of the job description in the resume or somewhere on your application. Does that work? - Again, I can only speak to Greenhouse. It shouldn't work because, you know, the system is meant to find the best applicants. And so we know that, you know, sometimes people are going to try to do silly stuff like that, and, you know, we're going to try to just work on what's visible on the resume. And I think there sometimes can be a little bit of a cat-and-mouse game where people find, oh, there's some technical corner that we haven't uncovered yet that we're going to exploit. Those things often get patched up pretty quickly. And so I wouldn't count on, you know, doing a whole lot of that as being a real benefit. And to your earlier point, let's say you did have these skills, or let's say these skills were required for the job and you didn't have them, but you put them in white on your resume so you get through the next step. It's not really going to help you get the job anyway. As you're going to spend your time having to interview for a job where you don't really have the skills. So I say stick to what you've actually done, make it sound as good as you can, put it on the resume in ways that are easy to get, you know, noticed, and then, you know, that's the best way to get a chance. - And just to everyone watching out there, we're getting so many questions, we're going to get to more of those. We obviously can only take one at a time, though, so I appreciate your patience. And this one comes from John in Chicago. It's a great question. "Do formatting choices prevent a system from correctly ingesting a resume? Should I consider my font size, bullets, and lines?" - Generally not. And again, I can mostly speak on behalf of Greenhouse. I would say generally not, in the sense that, and I think if I understand the question right, what I think is there's certain pieces on the resume that the system is going to try to parse out or understand this is the person's name, this is their email address, let's say. And we actually invested in Greenhouse in a technology to really increase the ability of our software to read resumes. As you might imagine, there's no standard format for these things. And so there's as many kinds of resume formats as there are people on the face of the earth, basically. And so it's actually quite a complicated technical job to parse all that needed information out. And so Greenhouse does a pretty good job of that. So if you put it in six-point font, that's not going to sneak past the ATS. Like, they're going to find your email address and populate that up. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. At the same time, you know, as someone in my 50s, like, if it's in six-point font, I'm going to have to zoom in. So, again, focusing on not the computer, but on the human that's going to read that resume. Make it legible, make it clear, make it kind of a standard, consistent, easy-to-understand format. That's really where your time and energy will be spent. - And I think that's why when I hear from recruiters and people get upset that, you know, they submit their resume, but then they have to enter everything again. It's mostly because probably the system couldn't parse that information, right? - That's right. And I think, you know, there are systems out there where I have heard a lot of that type of frustration, and that's part of why we made the investment that we did at Greenhouse. And so, by and large, you shouldn't have that experience at, you know, our customers' careers pages. But mostly it's about, you know, can you present a resume to the hiring team that's going to help compel them to talk to you? - Got it. And we have a question here that's really popular. This is from Bhavana in India. "As a job seeker, if I update my salary expectations in the questionnaire, is that something recruiters can use to filter me out?" - It can be. - Okay. - So, you know, again, their job is to try to efficiently find, you know, the best person. And so sometimes, and again, you saw how it's configurable, so this is not a rule so much as an option. But some companies might say, "You know what, we're getting a lot of applicants in that may be a good fit for the role but have the wrong salary expectations, and so we want to help them." Or it may be that there's a local law or a regulation that requires the company to post the salary expectations. And increasingly that's the case. And so those may be something that's on the job application form or on the job posting. And if you fill that in, again, filling it in realistically is always the best answer. Because if there's a job that's paying $70,000, and you've got a salary requirement of $90,000, well, if you put that in there and you're like, "Oh, it's going to rule me out," well, guess what? You don't want that job. And if you think you could work for 70,000, maybe you should put 70 in. So I do think it can be used by companies to try to focus in on the people that are going to ultimately take the job and be really good at it. And so, yeah, I think you should try to fill that in accurately. - Got it. Yeah, and I've been in that situation before, and it's never comfortable. - It can be tricky. I mean, listen, nobody likes talking about money. Certainly nobody likes, you know, pre-negotiating for a job that they don't even know if they want yet. So I get that there's some discomfort with that, and I recognize that. But I do think that companies sometimes put that information in the form they're collecting to try to focus the search. - And we have a question here from Russell that I think a lot of people can empathize with, which is, "I have 20-plus years of experience in some jobs that I apply for, yet no response. It drives me crazy." What do you recommend for him? - Yeah, look, I mean, the first thing I'll say is that's very common. So I totally get it. And that can feel really frustrating. For a little bit of statistical backup to that point, if I look across all the companies that use Greenhouse, there are about 200 times as many applicants as there are openings at any given time. That goes up and down a little bit. But if you think about it, most times someone opens a job, it means you're one of 200. And so it is just a statistical thing that, like, there's just a shortage of, you know, great jobs for any one individual. And for certain roles that may be at the more experienced level, those numbers could be even greater. And so ultimately it is a numbers game. And my advice would be, you know, do the things that we talked about earlier. Use your network, find good contacts, find, you know, people at companies that you might speak to, craft really good job application materials, focus on making yourself look the best for the job. And then it is a numbers game, and put a lot of effort into it. It's not a guaranteed process, and unfortunately, that can be how it feels for a lot of people as I'm applying over and over again. There's no shortcut. - And I just want to kind of dive in, though, to that numbers game thing. Because that doesn't mean just applying to everything, right? Because, you know, if you, like, let's say you're an accountant and you apply to be a heart surgeon, like, that's not going to work. - It's not going to help you. It's just going to take extra time because you're going to get immediately, as we saw earlier, you're going to get immediately, you know, filtered out and rejected. And so if you apply to jobs you're not qualified for, obviously, you gave an extreme example, an accountant applying for a heart surgeon. But, you know, if you apply to jobs that just aren't going to hire you, it's not going to help. I think the gentleman's question that you just read, though, is, "Hey, I'm applying for jobs where I may feel very qualified for, I'm still not hearing back." And my answer is, yeah, that's happening now. I think that's just a reflection of the job market. I think there's a lot of people that are sticking in their jobs and not moving for that reason. And even as it's gotten easier and easier to apply for jobs, it's getting harder and harder to get a job. And that's just the reality of where we are right now in parts of the economy. - Yeah, and so it's sort of like, have that targeted job search. And I think what you touched on earlier is, like, it's a holistic process. So the application is just part of it. You need to be networking in there, you need to be sort of upskilling and stuff like that. So it's, you know, still focus on the jobs that you can actually do and do well, but applying is just going to be one part of that puzzle. - Yes, I think that's right. - Got it. And another question here, which is, again, always popular, which is, this is from Claire, "Is a three-page resume a hard no?" - A three-page resume is, in this day and age, totally fine. Again, I think that's a little bit of a, you know, an artifact of when we had to open up paper. and nobody was going to- But I think these days, you know, it's easy to scroll. Yeah. - No problem- - Because in Greenhouse, unless they actually open the resume, they won't see that it's three pages. - Yeah, that's right. And if they get to the point of looking at your resume, you know, just to scroll down and see, like, the last page of it is not a big deal. - And then the next question here we have from Laura is, "We need to know what will knock us out immediately." Is there any way to know that, or? - Well, again, some companies and some jobs may list those on the job application. They may say, "Here are the required capabilities that you need to have. Do you have them? Yes. No." In which case, that'll be pretty obvious to you. If not, then the information you're given is what's on the job description. It may say, "Hey, I'm looking for a marketing director. You have to have these kinds of experiences. I need you to have worked in this industry. You have to manage the size of team before." They may write those things, and that's going to reflect the thinking they're going to use when they then go in to filter through their list of applicants to try to find who they want to speak to. So that's really your best, you know- - Got it. And actually- - Transparency. - And sorry, quickly, one of the things that I often get asked, too, is like, "I get rejections at 2:00 a.m." So is that a system thing, or is that like, is there a recruiter that's sending out? What do you think? - There's a lot of reasons why that might be happening. It might be someone working at 2:00 a.m. I mean, a lot of businesses might be global, right? It might be that they have gone through, you know, the applicants, moved forward with a set of applicants that they think gives them a good shot to make the hire. And then they've got these remaining you know, hundreds who they're just not going to have time to get to because they've already looked at a number of applicants. And so they may just do, like, kind of a select all and reject. And in that case, you know, I get that it can feel puzzling or mysterious or frustrating or sinister, that you're getting an email at two o'clock in the morning. And I think, you know, that's probably just a reflection of when people are getting the work done more than anything else. And the fact is, it's really nice to hear back that you haven't gotten the job versus holding onto a false hope that, you know, you're still in line because you haven't. So, you know, we do encourage all of our customers to at least notify applicants whenever they've made the decision not to move forward with them so that you can get some closure, and you know you're not moving forward, and you can do your next step. - And the next question I have is from Chinmay in Germany, which is, "Do ATS systems read and process PDFs as well as Microsoft Word or Google Docs? What's preferred?" - Again, speaking on behalf of Greenhouse, no preference. So from our standpoint, they all look the same. It's all a document. It's all going to get turned into, you know, an image of that document that the system is going to, you know, pull out some basic identifying information. And from there, you know, it won't matter if it started its life as a PDF or some other format. - And then I guess, like, as... And again, thank you so much for kind of, like, demystifying all this. What is your kind of, like, lasting piece of advice? Because, like, there's so many people out there rightly frustrated because they're applying into what I think they feel like is a black hole. And then, you know, they're not hearing back. They hear all these things about, like, AI and stuff. So if you were sitting down with a family member or a loved one, and they were in that position, what would your advice be to them? - Which, to be clear, I have. As you can imagine, in my circle, like, I'm that guy. - You're the go-to guy. - I'm that guy. - Yeah. - And so, you know, not to make light, like, the advice is, you know, make a resume that really does a great job of reflecting you and your accomplishments in the best way. Apply to as many jobs as you can where you think you are highly likely or qualified to get a job. And then try to build your network and find other opportunities to interact with those types of companies that may have those openings. Couple of other things I'll say that are maybe more Greenhouse-specific. If you notice that a company is using Greenhouse, two things in particular you can do. Number one is there's the ability to subscribe to job alerts. So you'll see there on the page, if you don't see the job you want or if you've already applied, you want to know about new jobs. If they're using Greenhouse, you can put in what jobs you want to know about, and it will email you when new jobs like that open up, and so the next time they have a job opening, you'll be able to hear about it early and get early in line, you know, to apply quickly. So that's one thing you can do. The other is that in the My Greenhouse, which is the candidate-facing side of it, there's an option called My Dream Job. And what that is, is once a month you get to designate, of all the jobs you apply to, one job as your dream job. And what that does is it shows those employers, "Hey, this is somebody who, of all the jobs they may have applied to, they've chosen this one as the one that they think they're the best qualified for and that they most want." And that shows up as a priority inbox on the recruiter side. And so that's one way that you can help sort of stand out from the sea of applications that you're trying to compete with and get the attention of a company who you really want to talk to. - Got it. And then we have one more question, if that's okay. And I think you touched on this earlier with the demographic questions. This is from Kevin in New York. "How can you assure us that ageism isn't built into the ATS?" - Yeah, well, quite the opposite. You know, a big part of what we try to do with Greenhouse is to engineer those things out. So if you notice the screen we showed earlier, where you're kind of assessing a job applicant at the end of all the interviews, the focus of that is on the assessments. There's a structured hiring process. Every candidate goes through the same interviews, they get asked the same questions, usually in the same order, and we collect the same information into the system about them. And then the focus of that decision is really on those thumbs up, thumbs down, those evaluations that happen. And so, you know, there's a lot that goes into designing the system to be focused on objective criteria and fit for the role so that things like age, gender, sexuality, military status, all these irrelevant qualities, are not really visible or part of the process. - Yeah, and also, in some places, like the U.S., it's illegal to take those into consideration. - For sure. - Yeah. - And, again, a lot of this is on, not the system doing the tracking, but on the people. And I'm not here to tell you that every person that ever interviews you is unbiased. You know, you very well may come across people who, for a variety of reasons, are going to make those decisions. But what Greenhouse does is try to make it easier for them to be unbiased and to help to help flag when bias is creeping into their process so that they can take corrective action on it. - And sorry, we just have a few more questions. This is from Danny in the U.S. "Does it help or hurt if you're the first 20 applicants or so?" - Our data shows that the early applicants do have an advantage. So that's part of why you want to subscribe to those job alerts is because, again, there's nothing nefarious necessarily going on here. But if you think about what happens, somebody opens a job, they often want to fill it. And so, you know, when the applicants start to come in, you know, they're going to take, maybe a day later, a look at what's in the pipeline, maybe do a little bit of filtering, and then start to move forward with applicants. If they don't see what they need, they may start to go back to that top of funnel and grab the next batch of applicants. But often, they can find what they need in the first set. So yeah, applying early does give you an advantage. - Yeah, and actually, LinkedIn's data shows the same thing. And this one is from Bilal in the UAE. "What's one thing candidates think helps pass them through the ATS but actually doesn't?" I think there's a lot of them, right? - Boy, yeah, that's kind of the point of this conversation. I mean, look, there's a few things that I've heard a lot. There's this idea that you talked about, using, like, white text on white background so I can put secret information in. That's often not going to really be visible to anyone or do much of anything. And then the other is, I think there's a lot of these people out there selling job seekers on this idea of an ATS score, and we're going to look at your resume, we're going to score it for an ATS. And like, yeah, there's some basic formatting stuff. If your name and work are legible, if you're focused on outcomes of your jobs, like those types of things, they'll be helpful because they're helpful to humans, not 'cause they're, like, cracking the code on a secret algorithm. So those are a couple of, I think, the myths that I've heard over and over again that probably it's best to know are not true. - And then the idea of keyword stuffing, which is basically like people saying, like, "I'm just going to throw the sink at this and I'm going to put every single keyword that I can think of in that." Does that help at all, or? - It really doesn't. It's really not, because again, you know, when the employers are searching for the skills and experiences that they need, the software's already going to do the job of looking at related and similar keywords. And so, you know, if you say, you know, you're a full stack engineer and I say I'm looking for, you know, a Java programmer, like, that will show up as something relevant to it. - Yeah, and also, I know a lot of people, and sorry, just one more on the keyword thing, is like, a lot of people, they'll, I call them filler, where they're sort of like generic skills that kind of most people will have. Do you suggest sticking with hard skills over soft skills? So the hard skills would be like Python or specific software. Or does it really come down to, like, the specific role? - I think it's fine to put in, I call 'em durable skills. I think it's fine to put in durable skills. If you're someone that, like, thrives on uncertainty or is a good problem solver, like, it's good to put those things in there too, because that says something about you as well. I don't think they're going to be used a lot in the filtering stage, because I don't think most employers expect, you know, the same set of those types of descriptors to be in everybody's resume. But let's face it, the resume is not just the top-of-funnel tool. So as you get further in, you know, now I'm handing to a hiring manager after maybe two or three interviews, they're going to look at a couple of people. It's good to know if you are somebody who is detail-oriented, or if you are somebody who thrives on uncertainty or loves startup challenges, like these kinds of more durable, personality-based traits as opposed to these kinds of, like, transient skills that you might learn and be certified in. - Yeah, and, you know, for all the job seekers watching, you know, I thank you so much for sort of bearing with us and sort of going through these questions with us. I know it's super frustrating, and we hear you, we see you. That's why we're having this conversation. And, you know, we're here to sort of help demystify you, and hopefully, I think what we talked about today, obviously, it's specific to Greenhouse, but at the same time, I think it frees you up to focus more on being a good candidate and not thinking that there's this wall between you and the employer. So thank you so much, Daniel. - Thanks, it's really good to be here. And, you know, again, I really think if you're a job seeker, you know, you deserve a lot of empathy these days. And so that's part of why having conversations like this are so important. - Yeah, and big thanks to Daniel for joining us today and for helping make the hiring process a little less mysterious. And for all of you out there, I hope you're walking away with some more clarity and confidence around how to better navigate the hiring process. I know I learned some stuff through this conversation. And also, you know, make sure that you're sharing what you heard today on LinkedIn. You could use the hashtag #WatchWithPremium. You could tag me, you could tag Daniel. We'd love to hear your takeaways. And also, you could just help other job seekers by spreading this information. We know job searching is intense, and it's so much better to do this as a community. So consider connecting with someone else who joined today's conversation. Maybe it's someone who dropped a helpful comment, shared a smart question, or who has a job or background you are curious about. You never know where one connection might lead. And as we talked about, it's a holistic process. We have a lot of really exciting events coming up, so check out linkedin.com/events to find out more about our upcoming conversations. I have a great one coming up next week. But until then, keep learning, keep applying, and keep showing up. Thanks again for being here, and until next time, stay well and best of luck.