Why You Didn’t Hear Back: How Applicant Tracking Systems Score, Rank, and Quietly Reject Job Seekers

If you’re early in your career — maybe still in school or just a year or two out — you’ve probably applied to jobs online and wondered why you didn’t even get a “no thanks.” You might have met the qualifications. You might have even been excited about the opportunity. But the silence? Deafening.

The reason might not be the recruiter. It might not even be the company. The reason might be software.

It’s called an applicant tracking system. ATS for short. And almost every employer with more than 1,000 employees uses one. A lot of companies with just a few hundred people do too. The bigger the company and the more well-known the brand, the more likely it is that your resume goes through an ATS before a recruiter ever sees it — if they ever do.

What is an ATS?

An applicant tracking system is software that helps employers post jobs, collect applications, screen resumes, schedule interviews, and make offers. That sounds pretty harmless. Helpful, even. Most companies hire for dozens — or hundreds — of roles a year. An ATS keeps things organized.

But today’s ATS platforms don’t just track candidates. They evaluate them. Many now use artificial intelligence or algorithmic logic to decide which resumes rise to the top and which sink to the bottom. It’s not just a digital filing cabinet — it’s a gatekeeper.

Some of the best-known ATS platforms include:

• Workday Recruiting
• iCIMS Talent Cloud
• Oracle Taleo
• SAP SuccessFactors
• Greenhouse
• SmartRecruiters
• Lever
• Jobvite
• UKG Pro Recruiting
• JazzHR (often used by smaller employers)

You probably didn’t notice which system you were applying through. Most candidates don’t. But if you clicked “Apply” on a job at a Fortune 500 company, odds are high that your application was handled by one of the tools above. And odds are even higher that your resume was scanned, scored, and ranked — automatically — before a human ever got involved.

Ranking and Scoring: The Invisible Interview

Here’s how it usually works: you apply. The ATS parses your resume. It extracts key data — job titles, employers, education, skills, certifications — and compares them against the requirements in the job posting. Some systems do a simple keyword match. Others use natural language processing or machine learning to try to assess whether your experience and qualifications make you a “good fit” for the role.

Then it assigns you a score.

You don’t see that score. But recruiters do. When they log into the ATS, the default view often shows them the highest-ranked candidates first. Tier 1. Great match. Tier 2. Could work. Tier 3. Meh.

And here’s the kicker: in high-volume roles — those with dozens or hundreds of applicants — recruiters often only look at the top-ranked ones. The rest? They’re never reviewed. Never considered. Never discussed. Your resume was seen by a robot, scored poorly, and ignored.

Is that a rejection?

Not technically. The ATS didn’t send a “thanks but no thanks” email. It just quietly placed your resume at the bottom of a virtual pile, where no recruiter ever went digging.

But if no one ever looked at your application — not because of anything you said or did, but because a machine decided you weren’t worth the time — then yes, for all practical purposes, you were rejected. By software.

But Wait — Don’t Recruiters Reject Candidates?

This is where things get fuzzy. Talk to recruiters and many will insist, “The ATS doesn’t reject anyone.” And technically, they’re right.

Most ATS platforms include something called “knockout questions.” These are the ones that ask if you’re legally authorized to work in a country, if you meet the minimum degree or certification requirements, if you can work a particular shift, and so on. If you say “no” to a required question, the system might automatically disqualify you. That’s explicit rejection.

But that’s not what’s happening to most early-career applicants. Most are being disqualified not because of a wrong answer, but because of low ranking.

The recruiter doesn’t see those low-ranking applications — either because they’re buried at the bottom of the list or because the recruiter doesn’t have time. In roles with a hundred applications, the top 10 or 20 are usually more than enough to build an interview slate. So those are the ones recruiters review. Everyone else? They’re never looked at.

Eventually, the recruiter fills the role and uses the ATS to trigger a batch rejection email to everyone else. You get a message saying, “We’ve decided to move forward with other candidates.” But you were never considered in the first place.

If You’re Not Considered, You’re Effectively Rejected

Here’s the key idea: if your application is never seen because of how the ATS ranked you, then the ATS has effectively rejected you. Not because of something you did wrong. But because the system didn’t elevate you high enough to be reviewed.

It’s not just semantics. It’s real-world impact. If your resume doesn’t contain the right keywords — or your experience isn’t presented in exactly the way the ATS expects — you could be an amazing candidate and still get scored low.

Some systems give you a score out of 100. Others use stars. Some use tiers. But the outcome is the same: low-ranked candidates get no attention, no review, and no interview. Which means they get no job.

The Mobley v. Workday Lawsuit: Is the ATS Making Hiring Decisions?

All of this came to a head in a lawsuit filed by a job seeker named Julian Mobley in 2023.

Mobley, who is Black, applied to hundreds of jobs through platforms that used Workday’s ATS. He was repeatedly rejected — not by a human, but by the system, which he alleges never passed his application along to recruiters. Mobley is now attempting to bring a class-action lawsuit arguing that Workday’s ATS is functionally acting as a staffing company by making hiring decisions on behalf of employers.

That’s a big deal.

Why? Because staffing companies are subject to anti-discrimination laws. If a staffing agency consistently filters out candidates based on race, gender, age, or disability — even unintentionally — that’s a legal problem. And if ATS platforms are doing the same thing, they might be liable too.

The core of Mobley’s argument is that if the ATS scores and ranks candidates in a way that controls who is and isn’t seen by recruiters, then it’s not just a tool. It’s an actor. It’s making decisions. And if those decisions disproportionately disadvantage certain groups — even by accident — that’s a civil rights issue.

Workday, for its part, denies wrongdoing. They argue that their platform is just one piece of a broader hiring process and that employers make the final decisions.

But Mobley’s legal team isn’t just talking about explicit rejection. They’re talking about functional rejection. If no one sees your resume because of how the software scored you, and if the software’s design results in racially disparate outcomes, that’s a problem — for employers and for the software vendors.

The case is still in the early stages, but its implications are huge. If the court agrees that ATS platforms can be held responsible for discriminatory outcomes, that could reshape how these tools are designed and used. It might even force greater transparency around how scoring algorithms work — something that’s currently hidden behind proprietary code and vague marketing language.

What This Means for Early-Career Job Seekers

For you, the job seeker, this might all feel a little overwhelming. You’re not just competing against other applicants — you’re navigating invisible filters, AI-driven rankings, and systems you can’t see or understand.

But here’s what you can do:

• Always tailor your resume to the job description. Use the same phrases and keywords when possible.
• List relevant skills, certifications, and job titles using language that matches what’s in the posting.
• Avoid graphics, tables, or non-standard formatting that can confuse resume parsers.
• Don’t rely only on applying online. When possible, try to find a referral or reach out to someone inside the company to flag your application.

None of this guarantees success. But it gives you a better chance of making it past the machine and into the human part of the process — where real decisions are made.

Because right now, if the software doesn’t like your resume, the recruiter probably won’t even see it. And if they don’t see it, they can’t consider you. Which means the ATS didn’t just track your application. It decided your fate.