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 .

Martech Analyst

CloudWalk · São Paulo

We’re looking for a Martech Analyst to structure, scale, and govern CloudWalk’s marketing and product data ecosystem — ensuring it effectively supports acquisition, engagement, retention, and monetization strategies.

This person will own the end-to-end Martech architecture, from data collection to activation. They will define and maintain the tracking strategy across products, ensuring events, properties, and integrations are standardized, well-documented, and reliable.

They will be responsible for designing and evolving the integration layer between tools such as RudderStack, Amplitude, Iterable, and other platforms — guaranteeing clean, consistent, and actionable data flows that power lifecycle campaigns, experimentation, attribution, and personalization.

The role also includes establishing and enforcing data governance frameworks (taxonomy, validation, monitoring), preventing data drift, and ensuring metric consistency across teams — enabling confident decision-making at scale.

Beyond data infrastructure, this professional will act as a bridge between Marketing, Product, and Data, helping define measurement strategies, evaluate new tools, and unlock growth opportunities through better use of data.

Additionally, they will design and implement intelligent agents to automate data validation, recurring analyses, and insight generation — ensuring AI-driven workflows operate on structured, high-quality data.

We’re looking for someone with strong Martech architecture experience, a product and growth mindset, and hands-on expertise across event-driven ecosystems, lifecycle marketing, and measurement frameworks.

We’re looking for a Martech Analyst to structure, scale, and govern CloudWalk’s marketing and product data ecosystem — ensuring it effectively supports acquisition, engagement, retention, and monetization strategies.

This person will own the end-to-end Martech architecture, from data collection to activation. They will define and maintain the tracking strategy across products, ensuring events, properties, and integrations are standardized, well-documented, and reliable.

They will be responsible for designing and evolving the integration layer between tools such as RudderStack, Amplitude, Iterable, and other platforms — guaranteeing clean, consistent, and actionable data flows that power lifecycle campaigns, experimentation, attribution, and personalization.

The role also includes establishing and enforcing data governance frameworks (taxonomy, validation, monitoring), preventing data drift, and ensuring metric consistency across teams — enabling confident decision-making at scale.

Beyond data infrastructure, this professional will act as a bridge between Marketing, Product, and Data, helping define measurement strategies, evaluate new tools, and unlock growth opportunities through better use of data.

Additionally, they will design and implement intelligent agents to automate data validation, recurring analyses, and insight generation — ensuring AI-driven workflows operate on structured, high-quality data.

We’re looking for someone with strong Martech architecture experience, a product and growth mindset, and hands-on expertise across event-driven ecosystems, lifecycle marketing, and measurement frameworks.

The technical challenge will simulate real A/B testing implementation from our day-to-day.

What you’ll do

  • Design and own the event tracking architecture across web, app, and backend, defining event structures, properties, and naming conventions, and ensuring proper implementation with Product and Engineering.
  • Manage the end-to-end data flow across tools like RudderStack, Amplitude, and Iterable, ensuring events are correctly collected, transformed, validated, and consistently available across all destinations.
  • Establish and enforce data governance, including taxonomy, validation, monitoring, and alerting, to prevent data drift and guarantee reliable, decision-ready data.
  • Partner with Marketing and CRM teams to enable segmentation, lifecycle campaigns, personalization, and experimentation, while defining and maintaining core metrics such as activation, retention, and LTV.
  • Evaluate and implement Martech tools and integrations, and build automated workflows and intelligent agents to validate data, generate analyses, and surface insights, continuously improving data quality, scalability, and cost efficiency.

What we’re looking for

  • Strong SQL skills and analytical depth, with the ability to navigate large datasets and translate business questions into structured analysis.
  • Clear, structured thinking — able to break down problems into hypotheses, design analyses, and turn results into actionable insights.
  • Solid understanding of data quality, tracking, and metric definitions, with a high bar for consistency and reliability across tools.
  • Experience with Martech ecosystems (e.g. CDPs, product analytics, engagement platforms) and event-driven data models.
  • Ownership mindset with strong communication skills, able to work cross-functionally with Marketing, Product, and Engineering and drive initiatives end-to-end.
View full listing