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 .

Staff Data Engineer

Artisan · San Francisco

About Artisan

We're building AI employees. Not chatbots. Not copilots. Autonomous digital workers that do real jobs.

Our first, Ava, is an AI BDR used by hundreds of companies. She researches leads, writes and sends emails in a customer's voice, runs multi-step outbound sequences, manages her own deliverability infrastructure, self-optimizes over time, and handles objections and meeting booking. She's not a tool someone uses. She's a teammate.

We're a YC W24 company, have raised $35M+ from investors including Y Combinator, and are at $8M+ ARR. Right now we're building Ava 2.0, a step change in what an AI employee can do. The engineering problems are hard and the surface area is enormous.

Role overview

You'll be the first Data Engineer on the Artisan team! We're managing a database of hundreds of millions of leads and creating real-time intent signals which monitor data fields for those leads. You'll own everything data-related at Artisan.

  • Design, build, and maintain scalable data pipelines that process and transform large volumes of structured and unstructured data

  • Manage ingestion from third-party APIs, internal systems, and customer datasets

  • Develop and maintain data models, data schemas, and storage systems optimized for ML and product performance

  • Collaborate with ML engineers to prepare model-ready datasets, embeddings, feature stores, and evaluation data

  • Implement data quality monitoring, validation, and observability

  • Work closely with product engineers to support new features that rely on complex data flows

  • Optimize systems for performance, cost, and reliability

  • Contribute to early architecture decisions, infrastructure design, and best practices for data governance

  • Build tooling that enables the entire team to access clean, well-structured data

Location: San Francisco, New York, or Remote USA

Team: Engineering

Reports to: CPTO, Sam Stallings

Who you are

  • 3+ years of experience as a Data Engineer

  • Proficiency in Python, SQL, and modern data tooling (dbt, Airflow, Dagster, or similar)

  • Comfort working in fast, ambiguous environments

  • Experience designing and operating ETL/ELT pipelines in production

  • Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure)

  • Familiarity with data lakes, warehouses, and vector databases

  • Experience integrating APIs and working with semi-structured data (JSON, logs, event streams)

  • Strong understanding of data modeling and optimization

  • Bonus: experience supporting LLMs, embeddings, or ML training pipelines

  • Bonus: startup experience

Interview process

  1. Introductory chat with our recruiter

  2. 1 hour technical interview with an engineer

  3. 1 hour technical interview with an engineer

  4. 30-minute interview with Sam, our CPTO

  5. 15-minute culture and values interview with Jaspar, our CEO

Our culture and values

  • Founder mindset. Everyone acts like an owner: take initiative, think big, challenge ideas, and push for 10× outcomes

  • Obsessed with impact. We apply the 80/20 rule, kill sunk costs quickly, and focus on what actually moves the needle

  • Customer-first, always. Every decision is made with the customer experience at the center

  • High standards, every detail. Quality matters in everything we ship, from product and code to copy and design

  • Clear, direct communication. We value candor, fast responses, and feedback

  • Winning team energy. We bring positive vibes, low ego, zero drama, and genuinely enjoy building together