The Software Brands Behind Every Rejection Email

Workday. Taleo. Greenhouse. iCIMS. These companies built the machines that silently filter you out every day. ## These Are the Systems Deciding Your Career Every time you apply to a mid-size or large company, your application goes through one of these systems. Five companies dominate the ATS market. ### Workday Recruiting — Market Leader (34%) Used by 1 in 3 Fortune 500 companies. Its parser is aggressive about format. Anything it can't cleanly read gets stripped out or misread. **Known users:** Amazon, Walmart, Bank of America, Accenture, Netflix, Deloitte **What Workday hates:** Multi-column layouts, tables, text boxes, embedded images, PDFs from Canva ### Oracle Taleo — Enterprise (22%) Built in 1999, still rejecting people in 2025. Notorious for forcing applicants to re-enter their entire CV into form fields even after uploading it. **Known users:** HSBC, Oracle, Procter & Gamble, ExxonMobil, Boeing, Nestle **What Taleo hates:** Special characters (e, n, u), non-standard date formats, LinkedIn-generated PDFs, files over 1MB ### iCIMS — Common (16%) Dominant in pharma, logistics, retail. Uses "candidate ranking" — your application is automatically ranked against every other applicant. **Known users:** FedEx, L'Oreal, Pfizer, Marriott **What iCIMS hates:** Skills-based CV format instead of chronological, employment gaps with no context ### Greenhouse — Growing (12%) The tech-sector favorite. Places higher weight on skills-based matching and less on job title history. **Known users:** Airbnb, Dropbox, HubSpot, Slack, Intercom **What Greenhouse hates:** Vague accomplishments without metrics, skills listed only in a sidebar | ATS System | Biggest Threat | Key Fix | |---|---|---| | **Workday** | Destroys formatted CVs | Single column, plain .docx | | **Taleo** | Misreads modern formats | Plain text, no special chars | | **iCIMS** | Ranks you against all applicants | Chronological format, exact keywords | | **Greenhouse** | Ignores implied skills | Explicit skills, quantified results | | **Lever** | Heavy LinkedIn integration | Align LinkedIn + CV exactly |