Company's ATS Rejects CEO's Own Resume as 'Unqualified' for Entry-Level Role

A tech CEO learned the hard way what candidates have been screaming about for years: applicant tracking systems are broken, arbitrary, and possibly sentient beings dedicated to destroying dreams.

The discovery happened when the CEO—let's call him "David" because that's his actual name on the LinkedIn post that went viral—decided to "walk in the shoes" of job applicants by applying to an entry-level role at his own company.

His resume was auto-rejected in 47 seconds.

The Experiment That Backfired Spectacularly

David runs a 300-person SaaS company and apparently thought it would be inspiring to apply to an entry-level customer success position to "experience the candidate journey." He updated his resume to remove his CEO title (listed himself as "business professional" instead) and submitted it through the company's standard application portal.

The automated rejection email arrived before he'd even closed his browser tab.

Subject line: "Thank you for your interest - Not moving forward at this time."

According to his viral LinkedIn post, David was baffled. He has 15 years of relevant business experience, a degree from a top university, and literally founded the company. How could the system reject him?

He checked the ATS dashboard. His resume had scored 23/100 on the automated screening. The threshold to pass to human review was 65/100.

Why The ATS Hated Its Own CEO

David dug into the rejection reasons, and what he found was equal parts hilarious and horrifying:

Lack of specific keywords: The job description required experience with "customer relationship management" and "client engagement." David's resume used terms like "business development" and "strategic partnerships." The ATS didn't recognize these as related concepts. Strike one.

Resume format issues: David's resume was beautifully designed with custom formatting, columns, and subtle graphics. The ATS couldn't parse it properly and missed half his experience. Strike two.

Degree mismatch: The system was set to require candidates to have degrees in "Business Administration, Marketing, or related field." David has a degree in Engineering. The ATS flagged this as disqualifying despite his MBA being listed right below it. Strike three.

Years of experience calculation fail: The job description said "0-2 years experience preferred." David's resume showed 15+ years. The ATS interpreted this as "overqualified" and dinged him for it.

Missing arbitrary requirements: The system was configured to require candidates to explicitly state they were "proficient in Microsoft Office Suite." David's resume didn't mention this because, you know, it's 2025 and everyone can use Excel. Instant rejection.

The algorithm determined that David—the CEO who literally approved the job requisition—was "not a suitable fit for this entry-level position."

The LinkedIn Post That Launched A Thousand Comments

David posted about the experience on LinkedIn with surprising honesty:

"Today I applied to an entry-level role at my own company. I was auto-rejected in under a minute. I have 15 years of experience, an engineering degree, and an MBA. I founded this company. And our system thinks I'm unqualified to answer customer support emails."

He continued: "If this is happening to ME—someone with every advantage—how many incredible candidates are we rejecting because of broken automation? How many diverse candidates are getting filtered out because they don't use the exact keywords? This needs to change."

The post got over 85,000 reactions and 4,000+ comments within 24 hours.

The comments were a mix of:

• Candidates sharing their own ATS nightmare stories
• Recruiters defending the need for automation (and getting roasted)
• HR professionals admitting their own ATS systems are garbage
• Consultants sliding into the comments offering to "fix this problem" for hefty fees

The Candidate Chorus of 'We Told You So'

Job seekers absolutely loved this story. Comments poured in:

"Welcome to what we've been dealing with for years. Maybe now someone will listen."

"I have a PhD and 10 years of experience. Your ATS rejected me last month. Glad you finally understand."

"I've been trying to tell recruiters that these systems are broken. Thanks for proving it for us."

One particularly spicy comment: "You built a system that rejects your own resume and didn't think to test it first? This explains a lot about modern recruiting."

Multiple candidates shared screenshots of rejection emails from David's company, noting the irony that they were probably more qualified than the entry-level posting required but got auto-rejected anyway.

The Deeper Problem Nobody Wants To Address

Here's where it gets uncomfortable: David's ATS isn't uniquely broken. According to research from Harvard Business School, applicant tracking systems reject qualified candidates at astonishing rates—up to 90% of applicants for some roles, including many who are perfectly qualified.

A study by Jobscan found that 75% of resumes are rejected by ATS before any human sees them. The reasons range from formatting issues to keyword mismatches to arbitrary scoring algorithms that nobody actually understands.

The worst part? Many companies don't even know how their ATS is configured. HR teams inherit settings from previous employees, vendors set defaults that never get reviewed, and requirements get added without anyone questioning whether they make sense.

One HR director commented on David's post: "We discovered our ATS was auto-rejecting anyone who didn't have 'team player' explicitly written in their resume. We'd been using this setting for 3 years and nobody knew."

The Company's Response: Damage Control

David's company immediately announced they were "conducting a comprehensive review of our applicant tracking system and hiring practices." They also committed to having humans review every application for the next 30 days while they fix the automation.

The company's Head of People posted a follow-up saying they'd identified "multiple configuration issues that were inappropriately filtering qualified candidates" and were implementing changes.

Translation: their ATS was a disaster and they only found out because the CEO's ego got bruised.

Within a week, the company had:

• Removed arbitrary keyword requirements
• Adjusted scoring thresholds
• Added resume parsing for multiple formats
• Trained recruiters to manually review borderline candidates
• Published their requirements more transparently in job descriptions

The Industry Learns Nothing

Despite the viral attention, most companies are continuing business as usual with their garbage ATS configurations. Some recruiting leaders defended automation as "necessary for handling application volume."

One recruiter on Twitter said: "If we manually reviewed every resume, we'd need 10x more recruiters. Automation is imperfect but necessary."

The response from candidates: "Or you could fix your broken systems instead of blaming volume for your laziness."

ERE Media's analysis of the incident noted that companies could dramatically improve ATS effectiveness with basic optimization—but most don't bother because they're not the ones being rejected.

The Uncomfortable Truth

The real lesson? Companies have built hiring systems optimized for their convenience, not for finding great candidates. ATS platforms filter out qualified people to reduce recruiter workload, not because those people can't do the job.

David's experiment accidentally proved what candidates have been saying forever: the emperor has no clothes, and the robots are making terrible decisions.

Will this change anything? Maybe at David's company. Everywhere else? Probably not until more CEOs accidentally reject themselves and face public embarrassment.

Where Things Stand

David's LinkedIn post has become required reading in recruiting circles. His company has reportedly seen a 340% increase in applications since fixing their ATS—turns out when you stop auto-rejecting qualified people, more qualified people apply. Who knew?

Several other CEOs commented saying they were inspired to test their own systems. At least two have admitted to getting auto-rejected from their own companies' job postings. The problem is systemic.

And somewhere, an ATS algorithm is still rejecting perfectly qualified candidates because they said "collaborated with" instead of "team player" in their resume.

David's final update: "I passed the second time I applied—after I literally copied and pasted keywords from the job description into my resume. If that's what it takes to get hired, we've failed as an industry."

No lies detected.