Key Takeaways

  • 75% of U.S. employers use automated applicant tracking systems to screen resumes before a human reviews them (Harvard Business School & Accenture, 2021)
  • The most common ATS failures are missing keywords, incompatible formatting, and incorrect file types
  • ResumeGeni scores your resume across 8 parsing layers — modeled on the same steps enterprise ATS platforms like Workday, Greenhouse, and Taleo use to evaluate candidates

How ATS Resume Scoring Works

Applicant tracking systems parse your resume into structured data — extracting your name, contact info, work history, skills, and education — then score how well that data matches the job requirements. Many ATS rejections happen because the parser couldn't extract critical fields, not because the candidate wasn't qualified.

LayerWhat It ChecksWhy It Matters
Document extractionFile format, encoding, readabilityCorrupted or image-only PDFs fail immediately
Layout analysisTables, columns, headers, footersMulti-column layouts break field extraction
Section detectionExperience, education, skills headingsNon-standard headings cause sections to be missed
Field mappingName, email, phone, dates, titlesMissing contact info is a common cause of immediate rejection
Keyword matchingJob-specific terms, skills, certificationsKeyword overlap affects recruiter search visibility and ATS scoring
Chronology checkDate ordering, gap detectionReverse-chronological order is expected by most ATS
QuantificationMetrics, numbers, measurable outcomesQuantified achievements help human reviewers and some scoring models
Confidence scoringOverall parse quality and completenessLow-confidence parses get deprioritized in results

Frequently Asked Questions

Is ResumeGeni free?
Yes. ResumeGeni is currently in beta — ATS analysis, scoring, and initial improvement suggestions are free with no signup required. Full guidance and saved reports may require a free account.
What file formats are supported?
PDF, DOCX, DOC, TXT, RTF, ODT, and Apple Pages. PDF and DOCX are recommended for best ATS compatibility.
How is the ATS score calculated?
Your resume is processed through an 8-layer parsing pipeline that extracts structured data the same way enterprise ATS platforms do. The score reflects how completely and accurately your resume can be parsed, plus how well your content matches common ATS ranking criteria.
Can ATS read PDF resumes?
Yes, but not all PDFs are equal. Text-based PDFs parse well. Image-only PDFs (scanned documents) and PDFs with complex tables or multi-column layouts often fail ATS parsing. Our analyzer will flag these issues.
How do I improve my ATS score?
Focus on three areas: use a clean single-column format, include keywords from the job description naturally in your experience bullets, and ensure all sections (contact, experience, education, skills) use standard headings.

ATS Guides & Resources

Built by engineers with 12 years of experience building enterprise hiring technology at ZipRecruiter. Last updated .

Machine Learning Engineer

Aarkiinc · San Francisco

Who are we?

Aarki is an AI-driven company specializing in mobile advertising solutions designed to fuel revenue growth. We leverage AI to discover audiences in a privacy-first environment through trillions of contextual bidding signals and proprietary behavioral models. Our audience engagement platform includes creative strategy and execution. We handle 5 million mobile ad requests per second from over 10 billion devices, driving performance for both publishers and brands. We are headquartered in San Francisco, CA, with a global presence across the United States, EMEA, and APAC.

The role?

We are seeking a motivated and detail-oriented Machine Learning Engineer to join our team. As an ML Engineer, you will be involved in designing and implementing machine learning models and data pipelines to enhance our programmatic demand-side platform (DSP). You will work closely with Senior MLE and other team members to drive impactful machine learning projects and contribute to innovative solutions.

What will you do?

  • Support the development of machine learning models to address challenges in programmatic advertising, such as predicting user responses, forecasting bid landscapes, and detecting fraud.
  • Collaborate with senior data scientists and cross-functional teams (product, engineering, and analytics) to integrate models into production workflows.
  • Analyze the impact of integrating new data sources and features into our models.
  • Build and maintain data pipelines to process and prepare large datasets for model training and evaluation.
  • Contribute ideas and assist in testing new tools, methodologies, and technologies to improve our machine learning capabilities.
  • Document experiments, assumptions, and outcomes; maintain reproducibility

What are we looking for?

  • Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
  • At least 2 years of professional experience in machine learning, statistical analysis, and data analysis.
  • Experience with machine learning techniques such as regression, classification, and clustering.
  • Proficiency in Python and SQL and familiarity with big data tools (e.g., Spark) and ML libraries (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch, Scikit-Learn).
  • Strong grasp of probability, statistics, and data analysis principles.
  • Ability to work effectively in a team environment, with good communication skills to explain complex concepts to diverse stakeholders.

Nice-to-Have

  • Familiarity with system programming languages including C++ and Rust is a plus.
  • Exposure to online inference systems, gRPC/REST model endpoints, or streaming features (Kafka/Flink)
  • Ad-tech familiarity: auction dynamics, pacing, fraud signals, creative personalization.

 

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