Job search glossary

An applicant tracking system is the software an employer uses to receive, store and filter job applications. It parses your resume into structured fields, stores it in a database, and lets recruiters search and sort candidates.

Common systems include Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and iCIMS. The practical consequence is that your resume is read as text before a human sees it, so anything the parser cannot extract effectively does not exist. Multi-column layouts, tables, text boxes and content in headers or footers are the usual culprits.

An ATS score is a rating produced by a third-party tool estimating how well a resume matches a job description, usually by comparing keywords. Most applicant tracking systems do not themselves assign candidates a score of this kind.

This distinction matters because the phrase implies employers rank you by a number they compute. Typically they do not. Recruiters filter by search terms and knockout questions. Treat an ATS score as a proxy for keyword coverage, useful for spotting gaps, not as the employer's actual verdict.

A knockout question is an application form question whose answer can automatically disqualify a candidate, such as work authorisation, willingness to relocate, or years of experience with a named tool.

These are evaluated before any human review, so an inconsistent or careless answer removes you regardless of how strong your resume is. Answer them accurately and consistently across applications to the same employer, since discrepancies surface in the tracking system.

Auto-apply is software that submits job applications on a candidate's behalf, filling forms and uploading documents without the person completing each submission by hand.

Implementations vary widely in what they actually automate and in whether each application is customised or identical. The meaningful questions are: does it write a distinct resume per role, does it apply a relevance threshold or fire at everything, and can you review before submission. Untargeted volume is what gives the category its poor reputation.

A cover letter is a short written note accompanying an application that explains why you are applying to this specific role and what you would bring to it.

Whether it is read varies enormously by employer, function and seniority. It matters most when your fit is not obvious from the resume alone, such as a career change, an employment gap, or a relocation. A generic letter adds nothing; if you cannot say something specific to the company, the resume is doing the work anyway.

A tailored resume is a version of your resume rewritten for one specific job posting, reordering and rewording your real experience so the most relevant parts appear first and use the employer's own vocabulary.

Tailoring changes emphasis and wording, never facts. Every claim still has to survive the interview and the reference check. The usual pass is: match your target title to the posted one, rewrite the summary against the top two requirements, reorder bullets so the most relevant leads, and swap a few terms into the posting's language.

Keyword stuffing is padding a resume with job-description terms that do not reflect real experience, sometimes hidden by rendering the text in white or at a tiny size.

It does not work as intended. Parsers strip formatting, so hidden text is extracted and then displayed to the recruiter as visible nonsense, which reads as an attempt to game the filter. It is one of the few things that gets a resume rejected outright rather than merely ranked low.

A match score is a number estimating how closely a candidate's experience fits a specific job description, produced by comparing the two rather than by counting keywords alone.

Scores are only meaningful relative to the system that produced them, since every tool sets its own scale and threshold. What makes a score useful is whether it changes your behaviour: a high bar is worth having only if you actually skip the roles that fall below it.

A ghost job is a posting that is publicly listed but not actively being hired for, because the role was already filled, was frozen, or was posted to collect resumes or signal growth.

There is no reliable way to identify one from the posting alone. Weak signals include a listing that has been open for months, is reposted repeatedly with an unchanged description, or names no hiring manager or team. The cost is real: time spent tailoring an application nobody will read.

Reverse recruiting is paying a service to run your job search for you, finding roles, preparing applications and submitting them, in contrast to a recruiter who is paid by the employer.

The distinction that matters is who the service works for. A traditional recruiter is compensated by the hiring company and is filling their role; a reverse recruiter is compensated by you and is filling your pipeline. Pricing is usually a monthly fee or a percentage of first-year salary.

H1B sponsorship is a US employer filing a petition for a specialty-occupation work visa on behalf of a foreign national, taking on the legal and financial obligations of that petition.

Not every employer sponsors, and many postings do not say either way. Because H1B petitions are subject to an annual cap and a lottery, an employer's willingness to sponsor does not guarantee a visa. Filtering for employers with a history of approved petitions is a far better use of time than applying broadly and asking later.

OPT and CPT are forms of temporary US work authorisation available to F-1 international students. CPT covers work that is an integral part of the curriculum; OPT covers employment in the student's field of study, typically after graduation.

Both are time-limited, which shapes the job search: candidates on OPT often need an employer willing to sponsor an H1B before the authorisation expires. Employers frequently ask about this on the application form as a knockout question, so knowing your own dates and status precisely is part of applying.