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 .

Software Engineer, Frontend

Dust · Paris

About Dust

We're creating a new AI operating system that has the potential to change the way companies operate. Our mission at Dust is to transform how work gets done by letting any team and employee shape the exact agents they need to accelerate their work.

With 70%+ weekly active users, people stick with Dust as much as they do with Slack and Notion. We already are a core part of their jobs.

We're at an exciting stage of our journey and growing fast. We're serving great customers like Cursor, Clay, Whatnot, and Persona, and aim to 5x our growth by the end of 2026.

Dust is a Sequoia-backed company with an experienced and determined team of optimists (coming from companies like Stripe and OpenAI) that likes to focus on users, getting great things done by shipping fast, and doesn’t take itself too seriously while doing so.

TL;DR

We are looking for an experienced frontend engineer who feels comfortable working on backend tasks as needed. In this role, you will collaborate closely with our product designer team, contributing ideas to shape the user experience while implementing features in our React-based frontend. On the backend side, you’ll contribute to REST API work and infrastructure improvements and ensure a smooth developer experience across our codebase.

Our culture

  • Product-First: Unlike others focused on building foundation models, we're laser-focused on creating delightful product experiences with existing LLMs. Think “No GPUs before PMF”.

  • Small, High-Impact Team: Join a team of alumni from Stripe, Front, OpenAI, and other top tech companies. We're intentionally keeping our team small and mighty – every individual has massive scope and impact.

  • Transparency & Collaboration: Our repository is open source, and we leverage serendipity between team members. We believe the best ideas emerge when the team shares information and insights openly.

  • Proactive Problem-Solving: If you see something broken, fix it—without waiting for permission. We don't wait for solutions - we create them.

  • Ship to Learn: We move fast and learn from real user feedback.

  • Intellectual Humility: We value strong convictions balanced with open-mindedness. Team members confidently advocate for their ideas while remaining receptive to new perspectives and evidence that might change their minds. If new data emerges, we adapt quickly.

What you’ll do

  • Create delightful frontend experiences end-to-end: Design and implement visually engaging interfaces that define how users interact with Dust.

  • Frame and lead frontend technical projects to completion: Balance performance, accessibility, and maintainability—all with a full-stack perspective in mind.

  • Collaborate closely with users and product designers: Brainstorm interface solutions, gather feedback, and iterate rapidly to build delightful user experiences.

  • Build for scale: Architect frontend systems that gracefully handle increasing complexity while preserving simplicity and speed.

  • Champion best practices: Advocate for code quality, guide our design system’s evolution, and ensure every feature meets high standards of excellence.

  • Dive into the backend: Use Next.js (Node/TypeScript) to handle REST APIs, data retrieval, and integration tasks.

Tech Stack Highlights

  • Dust for Dust: We use Dust for Coding, debugging, knowledge search (runbooks, codebase), incident management, and task automation (i.e., creating issues).

  • Programming languages: TypeScript, Rust (not a requirement, we’re open to people expert in other programming languages).

  • Other relevant tools and technologies:

    • Frontend: React, shadcn

    • Backend: NextJS, Kubernetes, Terraform/Helm

    • Database: PostgreSQL, QDrant, Elasticsearch

    • DevOps: Datadog monitoring, Github actions based CI/CD

Benefits & Compensation

  • Competitive compensation: €30K - €150K* base salary

  • We offer substantial support for relocation, including a stipend up to €10k, finding an apartment in Paris, and supporting you with all residence and work permit-related procedures

  • Significant equity package in a Sequoia-backed startup

  • Health insurance for you and your dependents

  • New MacBook Pro or Linux machine, monitor, keyboard, etc.

  • Beautiful office in the heart of Paris

  • Opportunity to travel to the US multiple times a year

  • Regular team events and offsite

Dust Engineering Salary Grid

Regarding compensation culture, we're going to lean towards Netflix's early philosophy: we are happy to review levels and compensation as early and as often as it makes sense to do so, not when the calendar says so.

Regarding expectations associated with levels, we're including a very broad definition of each level below. When attributing a level at hiring, the expectation is for you to perform comfortably at this level within your first year. We'll set up catch-up times throughout that first year to keep track of your progress and communicate clearly whether you're matching these expectations.

- Level I: Limited prior experience, learning the ropes
- Level II: Level I + Autonomy
- Level III: Level II + Rigorous dependability
- Level IV: Level III + Excellence
- Level V: Level IV + Leadership
- Level VI: Level V + Impact on company trajectory

*We can go higher for outstanding profiles.

Location

We're prioritizing building our team with an in-person culture at our offices in Paris and San Francisco, because we value the magic that happens when talented people work closely together.

Why Dust

We're not building yet another enterprise SaaS tool. We’re creating an AI OS that will fundamentally change how companies operate. We believe existing AI models are powerful enough to have a tremendous impact on the world (and will keep getting better). The key is building the infrastructure so they have the right context, and building the best interfaces for humans to interact with them.

We have the unique opportunity to explore and shape the way humans interact with machines while building a product we use ourselves every day.

If you're excited about crafting products that reinvent B2B software and want to join a team that combines the best of startup culture with the backing of top-tier investors, we'd love to talk.

👋 Even if you don't check every box in our requirements, we encourage you to apply. We value diverse perspectives and backgrounds, and we're more interested in your potential and passion than a perfect match to our checklist.

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Learn how we think and work.