If an employer fails to link job postings to an applicant tracking system, what challenge does this create?

• A. Requirement to retrieve and manually sort résumés
• B. Inability to track time-to-fill
• C. Inaccurate payroll processing
• D. Poor onboarding experiences

Answer: (A)

When job postings aren’t linked to an applicant tracking system, the main challenge is having to retrieve and manually sort résumés. The ATS is designed to automatically collect submissions from job boards, career pages, and email, and to organize them for easy screening. Without that linkage, HR must pull résumés from multiple sources and sort them by hand, which is slow, error-prone, and makes it easy to miss qualified candidates or lose track of applicants. Downstream functions like time-to-fill tracking, payroll, or onboarding may be affected later, but the immediate issue is the manual handling of applications and résumés.