Glossary
Applicant Tracking System
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is software that manages the recruitment workflow — from posting jobs and collecting applications to screening resumes and scheduling interviews.
An ATS is the central hub for employer-side recruitment. It stores applications, parses resumes into structured data, enables keyword searches, tracks candidate status through pipeline stages, and generates compliance reports.
Popular ATS platforms include Greenhouse, Lever, Workable, iCIMS, Taleo, and Zoho Recruit. Each has different parsing capabilities, which means the same resume may score differently across systems.
For job seekers, understanding ATS matters because 98% of Fortune 500 companies and 75%+ of mid-size companies use one. If your resume can't be parsed correctly, it may never reach a human reviewer.
For recruiters, the ATS is both a workflow tool and a bottleneck. If screening criteria aren't configured well, good candidates get buried. Modern AI add-ons like Arbiter augment ATS functionality with evidence-based scoring that goes beyond keyword matching.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do small companies use ATS?
Increasingly yes. Affordable cloud-based ATS platforms (Workable, Zoho Recruit, Manatal) have made tracking systems accessible to companies with as few as 10 employees.
Can I apply directly to bypass the ATS?
Sometimes. Referrals and direct outreach to hiring managers can bypass ATS filters. But most companies still require a formal application through their ATS for compliance and record-keeping.