ATS guides
Applying through an applicant tracking system
Workday, Greenhouse, Lever and the rest each work a little differently for candidates. Find out which one a job uses, then apply without surprises.
Paste the link of the page where you apply (click “Apply” first — many careers sites hand over to the ATS there).
Guides by system
- Workday Large and mid-sized employers — Workday is common among big corporations, universities, hospitals and public bodies.
company.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com - Greenhouse Tech companies, start-ups and scale-ups in particular, as well as many mid-sized employers.
boards.greenhouse.io/company - Lever Start-ups and growing companies, especially in technology.
jobs.lever.co/company - iCIMS Large employers in retail, healthcare, finance, manufacturing and other sectors with high hiring volume.
careers-company.icims.com/jobs/1234/job - Oracle Taleo Large enterprises and public-sector employers; many have moved from Taleo to Oracle Recruiting Cloud.
company.taleo.net/careersection/… - Ashby Start-ups and fast-growing technology companies.
jobs.ashbyhq.com/company
What every ATS has in common
Whatever the brand, an applicant tracking system does the same three things: it parses your résumé into fields (contact details, job titles, employers, dates, education, skills), stores it with your answers to the employer’s questions, and lets recruiters search and review applicants. Decisions are generally made by people; the real risks are a résumé that parses badly and one that doesn’t contain the terms a recruiter searches for.
- One column, standard headings. Experience, Education, Skills — in that kind of wording.
- Each role on a clear line: title, employer, location and dates in one consistent format.
- Contact details in the body, not only in a header or footer.
- A text-based PDF or DOCX. Never a scan or an image.
- The job post’s real requirements, in its own words, wherever they’re true for you.
Check yours in seconds with the free ATS résumé checker, see which keywords job posts ask for by role, or read the full guide to making an ATS-friendly résumé.
Frequently asked questions
What is an applicant tracking system?
The software behind a company’s careers page. It collects applications, reads (parses) résumés into fields, and lets recruiters search, filter and review candidates.
Do I need a different résumé for each ATS?
No. One clean, single-column résumé with standard headings works across all of them. What changes is the application around it — accounts, forms and questions — and tailoring the content to each job.
How can I tell which ATS a company uses?
Click “Apply” and look at the address of the application page: myworkdayjobs.com is Workday, greenhouse.io is Greenhouse, jobs.lever.co is Lever, icims.com is iCIMS, taleo.net is Taleo, jobs.ashbyhq.com is Ashby. Paste the link in the checker on this page.
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