The candidate a keyword filter deletes
Candidate 4479 scores a 6 with the wrong programming language and is still the closest match on what the hiring manager stressed hardest.
Take a candidate we will call 4479.
The job description says Go or Java. This resume says Java. Not a line of Go anywhere on it. An ATS keyword screen drops the application, and nobody ever finds out it happened.
Now look at what the hiring manager stressed hardest in intake: has owned a service in production, and how the person behaves during an incident.
On both of those, 4479 is the strongest evidence in the pool. Owned a billing service for four years, primary on call. Led two Sev-1 postmortems and shipped the changes that came out of them.
Four of five stated must-haves, strongly evidenced. The language gap is real, and it is exactly why this scores a 6 out of 10 rather than a 9. It is not a reason for the candidate to vanish.
The question that never gets asked
The recommended action is to prescreen, and to ask the hiring manager whether Go is a hard requirement or a preference before the call happens.
That question never gets asked if a filter already deleted the candidate.
Keyword matching answers “does this document contain the word.” Hiring asks “does this person have the thing.” Those are different questions, and only one of them predicts anything.
The false negative is the expensive one, because nobody ever learns it occurred.