AMA: AI, ATS and a Tough Job Market...How Do You Break Through?

A subscriber asks: "Hi Kevin - A question about AI auto-reviews of applications and application formats. I spent all day Sunday working on my resumé for a dream role - Internal Communications Manager at [company name withheld]. I believe I am well qualified for the job. But by 7pm Sunday, my application had already been rejected! Was it AI that found a reason to reject me? I know Talent doesn't work that fast.... What could the AI have seen? How do I get past it? I did my resumé in Canva and downloaded that as a PDF... I don't know if that's a thing. Thank you so much for any insight and advice. I've been searching for a new role for a year now.”

First, I want to validate the feeling of frustration – it is a tough market on many levels, and the often opaque involvement of AI in the candidate screening and selection process doesn’t help. I’ve talked with dozens of job seekers like you, and you are not alone in feeling like you are “shouting into the void” with job applications.

While I can’t know for certain what happened with your resume, here are a few thoughts that hopefully help you and others who experience this during their job search. Unfortunately, it’s very common (and it happened to me, too, when I was job hunting last year). 

It can be helpful to look at the broader job market context when considering any single job application. The number of applicants is growing faster than the number of jobs, and when companies hire, they are increasingly looking at internal candidates. 

ICIMS, one of the largest providers of applicant tracking systems (it managed about ~225 million job applications for companies last year), said in its May 2025 Workforce Report that job openings are up 6% year over year — the highest level in the past 12 months – but it also reported that the growth of internal hires (+6%) has outpaced that of external hires (+1%) YoY. Overall, ICIMS reports that job applications are up 17% YoY. 

Other factors make this market tough. Companies cut their recruiting functions during the pandemic, and in many cases, those roles disappeared. The average recruiter manages 56% more job requisitions (14) and 2.7× more applications (2,500+) than three years ago, and the average recruiter headcount per team has declined from 31 in 2022 to 24 in 2024. It’s been a roller coaster of a job market for recruiting professionals, and many are juggling increasing demand from business partners, who themselves are facing rapidly shifting talent needs and priorities. 

In short: Even if you have been looking for a job for a long time, it’s not you. Everyone has a set of skills that an employer needs. But we’re in a market where making the match is hard for employees and employers. 

I also recommend job seekers get up to speed on ATS and AI in talent acquisition. Nearly all Fortune 500 companies use applicant tracking systems (ATS), like those sold by Workday, Greenhouse, Ashby, ICIMS, and others, and they all offer a range of AI-powered features to help recruiting teams manage the increasing volume of open jobs and applicants. Nearly 75% of recruiters say AI will change the way organizations hire, according to a LinkedIn survey, and many talent acquisition professionals are already integrating AI into their workflows. 

In short: if you are applying for a job, ATS will play a role in managing your resume, and it will likely assist a recruiter in making a first cut of the applicants using AI or other programming. 

When I talk to job seekers, knowledge of how ATS systems work and how they use AI varies, and it’s helpful to learn more about these systems for a few reasons. For one thing, improving your business acumen and understanding how companies acquire talent in 2025 will make you a better communicator. But most importantly, learning more about ATS systems will change your perspective on how you approach your resume and applications. Like a sports team scouting out its opponent before the game, you need to know what you are up against, and once you do, you improve your chances of winning.

Where to start? Recruiter Jan Tegze offers an excellent overview of ATS systems and provides an ATS-friendly resume template worth looking at. The major ATS companies are generally transparent about what their products do, such as this video from Ashby or this case study about how GM uses Workday to streamline its recruiting process. 

How to (mostly) rule out AI as a negative factor in your job search

While none of us can change the mechanics of today’s job market, there are some things job seekers can control:

Make sure your resume is ATS-friendly. Perhaps this goes without saying, but I still meet job seekers who resist doing so. To be sure, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to any aspect of a job search, and so different approaches will work for different people. However, if you’ve been on the job hunt a while and feel like you are not getting traction, think of ATS as something you can rule out…there are a million factors that go into a company making a hiring decision. If you can eliminate one, you just improved your odds.  

I noticed you mentioned using a resume template from Canva. The conventional wisdom on making your resume ATS-friendly is to use simple and minimal formatting – no pictures, tables, columns, or color formatting. Plus, standard fonts (e.g., Arial, Times New Roman) and standard headers (e.g., “Work Experience”). 

Canva templates often use design elements (text boxes, graphics, non-standard fonts) that run a higher risk of an ATS system being unable to parse a resume correctly. In writing this article, I searched for a “resume template” on Canva, and only two of the first ten templates in the search results looked ATS-friendly. While I think there are good uses of a well-designed resume, for most job seekers, I’d recommend using a very basic resume format to ensure nothing gets in the way of ATS and recruiters seeing you as a highly qualified candidate for your dream job. 

Don’t feel like you need to pay for a good template. Anyone can make an ATS-friendly resume, and Haley Drake at Career Rivisory offers an excellent free resume template if you need one.

Fight AI…with AI. Most ATS systems will score or rank applicant resumes based on an assessment of how well the resume content aligns with the job’s requirements. While it’s nothing new to tailor a resume to a job and most job seekers use AI in their job search in some way, consider using AI to help ensure your resume is picking up the right keywords, phrasing and concepts, and check ATS readiness. 

Below is a sample AI prompt to do just that. 

Narrow your search. This may seem counterintuitive, but sending out fewer resumes and only applying for jobs that are a strong match for your skills and work experience may yield better results. 

Part of the reason the job market is so hard and that recruiters are increasingly relying on ATS and AI to winnow the candidate field, as job postings receive hundreds of applicants, many of those applicants are not qualified, and many more are less qualified than others. If you have been searching for a job for a long time, it may feel like you will improve your odds by applying for jobs where you don’t have true experience in that role or industry in the hopes that someone will “take a chance.” 

ATS systems are designed to weed out resumes that are a poor match for the job requirements, so in most cases, it’s unlikely a recruiter will read between the lines and see how your skills can adapt to a role. In many cases, it’s possible a recruiter will never see your resume because the ATS system will have flagged it as a poor match. As I noted above, given the time and staffing constraints on recruiters, who face hundreds of applicants for a single role, it’s only reasonable that they will focus on candidates who are a very strong match (i.e., at or near 100%) for the job requirements. 

To be sure, people switch industries and “take a chance” on professionals with different skillsets all the time. And it may be true that companies would be better off taking a more expansive view of an applicant pool, and many do. But the conventional wisdom says that most don’t. In a high-volume applicant pool, that can mean dozens of candidates who, on paper, are a good match for a role don’t even get a screen interview. 

With this in mind, you may improve your odds by only applying for roles where you are a very strong match, especially staying within the industry where you have the most experience. This can be tough for job seekers to hear, especially for those who want to explore different industries or new roles. However, if you’ve been looking for a job for many months and you haven’t narrowed your search so far, it's worth considering.

Sample AI Prompt to Tailor Your Resume to a Job Description

Please analyze my resume against this job description and provide specific recommendations to improve alignment for applicant tracking systems (ATS) and human reviewers.

MY RESUME: [Attach or paste your complete resume text here]

JOB DESCRIPTION: [Attach or paste the complete job description here]

Please provide:

1. Keyword Analysis

• List important keywords/phrases from the job description that are missing from my resume

• Identify technical skills, software, certifications, and industry terms I should incorporate

• Highlight action verbs used in the job posting that I could adopt

2. Skills Gap Assessment

• Compare required vs. preferred qualifications against my background

• Point out areas where I have relevant experience but used different terminology

• Suggest how to better emphasize transferable skills

3. Language Optimization

• Recommend specific phrases to replace or enhance in my resume

• Suggest how to mirror the job posting's tone and terminology

• Identify opportunities to quantify achievements with metrics

4. ATS Optimization Tips

• Flag any formatting issues that might confuse ATS systems

• Recommend section headers that align with standard ATS parsing

• Suggest improvements for better keyword density without overstuffing

5. Content Recommendations

• Propose new bullet points that directly address job requirements

• Suggest reorganizing information to highlight the most relevant qualifications first

• Recommend additions to better showcase relevant projects or experiences

Format your response with clear sections and actionable suggestions I can implement immediately.