Final up to date: February 26, 2026
Initially revealed: December 2, 2021
Some candidates image an applicant monitoring system as an abyss the place resumes go to vanish. Others assume an AI-powered ATS mechanically rejects candidates earlier than a recruiter ever sees their utility.
These myths are frequent—however they’re additionally fallacious.
On this weblog, we’re busting the highest seven myths recruiters and candidates nonetheless consider and set the report straight on what in the present day’s applicant monitoring programs truly do.
The High 7 Applicant Monitoring System Myths Candidates and Recruiters Nonetheless Imagine
Misconceptions about how applicant monitoring programs—and the AI instruments constructed into them—truly work proceed to form how candidates strategy making use of and the way groups take into consideration recruiting expertise.
So, we’re right here to set the report straight.
Fable 1: AI is changing people within the hiring course of
Synthetic intelligence is now constructed into many applicant monitoring programs in some type, whether or not that’s serving to prioritize functions, highlighting potential matches, or surfacing related candidates from a database.
That visibility has made AI extra talked about, and in some instances misunderstood.
What AI doesn’t do is exchange the human factor of recruiting. Recruiters and hiring managers nonetheless assessment functions, assess expertise, conduct interviews, collaborate on choices, and decide who strikes ahead. The AI in an ATS is there to assist, not supplant, that human experience.
Right here’s the way it truly provides worth in trendy hiring workflows:
- Smarter screening insights: AI will help establish high-fit candidates early and sign when prime expertise may disengage so you’ll be able to act rapidly.
- Structured interviews and readability: Instruments like Lever’s AI Interview Companion automate summaries, floor key candidate insights, and assist interviewers keep centered on skills-based analysis slightly than administrative duties.
- Extra constant, fairer processes: By guiding interview query choice and suggestions assortment, AI helps scale back variability and assist a extra goal evaluation.
Actuality: AI helps groups transfer quicker and focus their time the place it issues most—human judgment, relationship-building, and high quality decision-making. People nonetheless determine who advances.
Fable 2: Solely Fortune 500 Firms Want an Applicant Monitoring System
It’s simple to affiliate applicant monitoring programs with massive, high-volume hiring organizations.
However hiring complexity isn’t solely about scale. Even groups making a handful of hires per thirty days nonetheless juggle job postings, functions, resumes, interview scheduling, suggestions, and communication throughout a number of stakeholders.
With out an ATS, that work typically lives in electronic mail threads, spreadsheets, shared folders, and disconnected instruments—creating extra guide effort and extra room for issues to fall via the cracks.
A trendy applicant monitoring system offers small and mid-sized groups construction early, so that they don’t must rebuild their course of later.
With the appropriate ATS in place, rising groups can:
- Centralize candidate data in a single system.
- Create constant workflows as hiring quantity will increase.
- Construct a repeatable hiring course of from day one.
As an alternative of outgrowing advert hoc processes, groups develop right into a system that scales with them.
Actuality: An ATS isn’t only for enterprises. It’s for any crew that wishes a extra organized, environment friendly, and constant hiring course of, no matter dimension.
Fable 3: Submitting an Utility Sends Your Resume into an Abyss
One of the persistent candidate beliefs is that resumes disappear the second they’re submitted.
In actuality, ATS platforms exist to stop that precise situation.
Applicant monitoring programs manage and centralize functions, making it simpler for recruiters to assessment, search, filter, revisit, and re-engage candidates over time. As an alternative of dwelling in scattered inboxes or spreadsheets, candidate data is saved in a single system of report.
This construction permits recruiters to:
- Observe the place every candidate sits within the hiring course of.
- Revisit previous candidates for future roles.
- Maintain communication constant and well timed.
Actuality: ATS platforms are designed to create visibility, not cover candidates.
Fable 4: Recruiters Attain out to Prospects in Bulk with out Reviewing Resumes
Some candidates assume recruiters depend on ATS platforms to blast generic emails at scale.
Whereas older, legacy programs might have inspired this habits, trendy ATS platforms—particularly these with built-in CRM capabilities—assist personalization at scale.
Recruiters can section expertise by function kind, talent set, location, expertise degree, or curiosity space and tailor messaging accordingly. Automation handles supply and timing, however recruiters nonetheless management who receives what and why.
This strategy permits groups to:
- Observe up on the proper second within the course of.
- Preserve constant communication with out guide effort.
Actuality: The result’s quicker, extra well timed, and extra related engagement—not impersonal mass messaging.
Fable 5: Fraudulent Candidates can “Trick” Applicant Monitoring Programs into Accepting Resumes
Recommendation about “gaming the ATS” continues to flow into on-line, typically suggesting that resumes ought to be filled with key phrases to get previous automated screening—a tactic that has turn out to be extra frequent amongst fraudulent candidates with the development of AI.
Whereas some ATS platforms use key phrase matching as one enter, sturdy hiring groups don’t depend on key phrases alone.
Recruiters nonetheless assessment resumes manually and consider:
- Depth and relevance of expertise.
- Alignment with function necessities.
A resume that clearly explains what you’ve completed, how you’ve completed it, and the influence you’ve had will at all times carry out higher than one full of disconnected buzzwords.
Actuality: Clear, related expertise issues greater than key phrase methods.
Fable 6: The Sole Purpose of an Applicant Monitoring System is to Serve Recruiters
It’s true that ATS platforms are constructed for expertise groups. However their influence extends on to candidates as nicely.
Lots of the moments that form candidate notion are powered by the ATS, together with:
- How simple it’s to use.
- How rapidly interviews are scheduled.
- How typically candidates obtain updates.
- How constant communication feels.
When these workflows run easily, candidates expertise quicker responses, clearer expectations, and fewer surprises. Once they don’t, candidates really feel the friction.
The ATS doesn’t simply assist recruiters; it underpins your complete hiring expertise.
Actuality: A very good ATS improves outcomes for recruiters and candidates.
Fable 7: An ATS and an HRIS are Mainly the Identical Factor
ATS and HRIS platforms are sometimes lumped collectively, however they serve completely different phases of the worker lifecycle.
An applicant monitoring system helps every little thing that occurs earlier than somebody is employed: sourcing, nurturing, screening, interviewing, and affords.
An HRIS manages what occurs after somebody turns into an worker: payroll, advantages, efficiency administration, and worker data.
Excessive-performing organizations use each programs collectively, with integrations that create a seamless circulation from candidate to worker.
Actuality: ATS and HRIS are complementary—not interchangeable.
The Actuality of Fashionable Applicant Monitoring Programs
Clearing up the myths is barely the start. The actual check is seeing how a contemporary ATS helps your crew’s workflows in follow—the way it helps recruiters transfer quicker, make better-informed choices, and ship a extra constant candidate expertise with out including complexity.
Obtain our Product Information to find out how Lever approaches AI-assisted screening, structured interviewing, CRM, analytics, and extra—or request a demo to see the way it all comes collectively in motion.
