What an ATS does with your resume
An applicant tracking system (ATS) stores applications and helps recruiters sort and search them. Many also parse your resume, copying your name, employers, dates and skills into fields.
Parsing can go wrong. Greenhouse lists image-only uploads, tables, columned layouts, graphics, and contact details placed in a header, footer or text box among the causes of a failed or partial parse. Someone then has to correct the fields by hand. Workday notes that results "can vary based on resume format and order of words" and recommends files without images.
So keep the file dull: one column, a standard font, real text, plain headings. Read more in how ATS systems read resumes.
How to read your score
The checker runs rule-based tests in your browser and adds up the points.
| Check | Points | What it looks for |
|---|---|---|
| Contact details | 10 | Email, phone, a LinkedIn or portfolio link |
| Standard sections | 20 | Plain headings for experience, education and skills, plus a summary |
| Length | 10 | Flags resumes under about 280 words or over about 800 |
| Bullets and results | 20 | Enough bullet points, and how many include a number |
| Language | 20 | Bullets that open with a verb, first-person words, phrases like "responsible for" |
| Parsing risks | 20 | Signs of columns or tables, unreadable characters, missing years, very long lines |
Add a job description and those six areas count for 65 percent of the total. Keyword match supplies the other 35 points. Matching about two thirds of the terms earns all 35, because chasing 100 percent leads to stuffing.
A score of 75 or more shows as Strong, 50 to 74 as Good start, and anything lower as Needs work. Read those labels as progress through a checklist. They do not predict an interview. No tool can simulate every ATS, since each vendor parses differently and each employer sets up its own process. Fix the weakest category first, then run the check again.
How to use keyword matching without stuffing
The checker pulls terms the posting repeats, then shows which ones your resume contains and which it lacks. Skip any generic words that happened to repeat. For the rest, ask three questions:
- Do I have this skill? If not, leave it out. An interviewer will ask.
- Have I described it differently? If you wrote "web analytics", the posting says "Google Analytics" and you use that tool, take the employer's wording.
- Where is the proof? A skill inside a result reads better than one in a list.
Pasting the posting into your resume or hiding words in white text might lift a number. Neither helps once a person opens the file.
Before and after: fixing a weak resume bullet
Before: Responsible for handling customer complaints.
After: Resolved about 40 customer complaints a week and cut average reply time from 2 days to 1.
The second version opens with a verb and shows scale. Those figures are examples, so use numbers you could defend in an interview.
The optional AI suggestions give you top fixes, rewritten bullets and skills the posting mentions. Your text stays on your device for the score and goes to our server only when you ask for this step. If the AI has no figure to work with, it writes [add number], so fill that in or cut the line. Add a suggested skill only if it is true.
Starting from nothing? The resume builder gives you a clean structure. Then pick a real posting from open jobs and test against it.