A software company with 200 candidates in their pipeline for various roles woke up Wednesday morning to discover their ATS had suffered a catastrophic glitch overnight. Every single candidate - the good, the bad, the ones who never showed up to phone screens - had been marked as "Hired" and received automated onboarding emails.

Yes, including the person who submitted a resume that was just the word "HIRE ME" in 72-point Comic Sans.

The Mass Confusion

The first sign something was wrong came at 7:15 AM when the HR inbox had 47 emails from confused candidates asking about start dates, benefits enrollment, and whether the job offer was real.

Sample email: "Hi! I got an email saying I'm hired and to complete my I-9 by Friday. I did a phone screen two months ago and never heard back. Is this legit or is someone pranking me?"

Another: "I already accepted another job. Why am I getting onboarding emails from you?"

And the best one: "I didn't even apply to your company? But the benefits look good, so... am I hired?"

The Internal Panic

The TA team arrived to 200 candidates marked as "Hired" in the ATS, with onboarding tasks assigned, background check requests sent, and equipment order forms auto-generated.

IT got 37 laptop order confirmations before anyone shut down the integration.

Facilities received desk setup requests for a company with 150 total employees trying to onboard 200 new hires.

Finance was staring at payroll additions that would triple their headcount cost overnight.

Nobody could figure out what triggered the glitch. One minute the ATS was fine, the next minute it decided everyone was hired. AI-powered hiring decisiveness at its finest.

The Cleanup

The TA Director sent a mass email to all 200 candidates explaining that "due to a technical error, you may have received onboarding communications in error. If you have not received a formal offer letter from our team, please disregard these emails."

Professional. Apologetic. Legally careful not to create accidental employment contracts.

Except 14 candidates replied saying they'd already quit their current jobs based on the onboarding email. Because apparently "complete your I-9 by Friday" was convincing enough to give two weeks notice without an actual offer letter.

Legal is now involved. Very involved.

The One Silver Lining

One candidate who'd been ghosted after final interviews for three months emailed back: "LOL your ATS has better communication than your hiring team. At least the robot told me I was hired."

The hiring manager, feeling guilty, actually reviewed that candidate's file and realized they'd meant to extend an offer but got distracted. They're now in final negotiations.

So the ATS glitch accidentally fixed one ghosting situation while creating 199 other problems. Net negative, but not zero.

The Vendor Response

The ATS vendor's explanation? "An overnight database maintenance script encountered an unexpected edge case in the status workflow automation."

Translation: "We have no idea what happened, but it's definitely not our fault, probably."

They pushed a patch. They assured everyone it wouldn't happen again. They offered three months of free support credits.

The TA team is now manually verifying every single status change in the system because trust has been destroyed. Which is exactly what you want - spending hours babysitting the software that's supposed to save you time.

Welcome to recruiting in 2025, where your ATS might accidentally hire everyone or no one, and you won't know until candidates start asking about their 401k match.