Living a Colorful Life in a Black-and-White ATS World
ken_walger·
This article explores how Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) compress rich, non-linear career histories into lossy categories like job titles, dates, and skill keywords. The author illustrates how real-world experience—such as managing construction schedules, vendor relationships, and budgets—builds vital engineering capabilities like dependency tracking and early risk detection, even though standard hiring filters strip those nuances away. For senior engineers and tech leaders, understanding this compression cost offers essential perspective both when navigating career growth and when designing fair hiring processes that evaluate true candidate capabilities beyond ATS keywords.