Questions, answered plainly

"ATS score" is shorthand rather than one official number. Hiring technologies produce a range of signals about applicants: match percentages, rankings, screening results, assessment outcomes, candidate profiles and automated recommendations. Different vendors calculate different things and call them different names. What they share is that they shape what happens to your application before a person reads it.

No. Some applicant tracking systems mainly store and organise applications. Others actively rank, match or assess candidates. There is no single universal score shared between every employer -- which is exactly why a deletion request goes to each vendor separately.

Yes. Federal recordkeeping rules require employers to preserve application records for at least one year, and two years for many federal contractors. Those are minimums, not limits -- vendor retention policies frequently run longer. Data you submitted during a previous job search can still be held today.

Yes, and this is the heart of the problem. A small number of vendors supply screening technology to very large numbers of employers. Stanford Digital Economy Lab research on algorithmic monocultures in hiring found that roughly 4% of applicants who applied to ten positions were recommended for rejection from all ten -- a higher rate than chance would predict.

No -- and that is deliberate. ATS Reset writes the request and tells you exactly where to send it. You send it from your own email address. That matters. Privacy laws give the right to you. A request sent from your own address, matching the address on your applications, is the version these companies are obligated to act on and the hardest one for them to dismiss. A third party emailing on your behalf usually triggers an identity-verification loop that slows everything down. Under laws like the CCPA, companies that receive a valid request are generally required to delete your data. We make sure your request is the kind they have to take seriously.

An estimate of how many hiring systems are likely to be holding applicant data on you, and the ability to compare the paid plans. The Free plan does not include privacy contact addresses, web-form destinations or the deletion request itself.

A personalised, state-specific deletion request with its subject line, plus the direct privacy email addresses for 10 selected ATS and recruiting systems. You also get the dashboard, request tracking, sent-date recording and suggested follow-up dates.

Everything in Reset, plus every ATS and recruiting vendor in our database, all supported privacy web-form destinations, the bulk copy-all-addresses tool, and the follow-up request generator.

Reset covers 10 selected systems and is the lower-cost option. Reset Pro covers our full database, including the vendors that only accept requests through a privacy web form rather than by email. Broader coverage means more of the places your applicant data may actually sit.

Some vendors do not publish a privacy email address and only accept requests through their own form. For those, ATS Reset gives you a direct link that opens the correct form in a new tab. You paste your request in and submit it yourself, then mark it submitted to keep your tracking accurate. Web-form destinations are included with Reset Pro.

Yes. Every company in your workspace has its own status. You mark each one as sent or submitted, and ATS Reset records the date and calculates a suggested follow-up date. You can also mark requests completed or denied as companies respond.

If a company has not responded after a reasonable period, a follow-up restates your original request and references the date you sent it. Reset Pro generates these for you, personalised and ready to copy. As with the initial request, you send it yourself.

Yes. A Reset cycle stays active for 90 days. When you start another round of applications you can purchase a new Reset, which creates a fresh cycle. Your previous cycles and their progress history stay in your account.