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 .

Midweight/Senior Designer

Founders Makers · London, England, GB

What we're looking for

We like to work with mavericks. Wild cards. Brilliant, empathetic, creative and strategic thinkers. Talented individuals who are comfortable enough to be independent, but humble enough to know they don’t know it all. We believe in being seriously playful. Making the work the most impactful it can be, and having some fun along the way. If that appeals to you then you’re reading the right job spec.

Topline Role Overview

We're looking for a Midweight or Senior Designer who is a genuinely rounded creative. Equally comfortable building a brand identity, designing a campaign, producing content, and bringing it all to life through exceptional motion work.

Motion is your superpower, but it doesn't define the edges of what you do. You think holistically about how brands look, feel, and move across every platform they live on. You're as engaged in the early concept stage as you are in the final delivery, and you bring real creative conviction to both.

You'll work across a diverse portfolio of ambitious startups, scaleups and major brands - spanning brand identity, campaigns, social content and digital platforms. You'll be a core part of a close-knit design team, and someone we'll invest in for the long term.

We're a growing studio, and we're building our team with that in mind. This role is hands-on for now, but as the team grows around you, so will your responsibility. If you're someone who's led or mentored before and wants an environment where that experience is recognised and developed, you're in the right place. We want people who are hungry to grow, not just looking for their next job.

Hours

9 - 6pm (but actually)

Location

London Hybrid, Shoreditch; we do three days in-office, two days WFH.

Training

Individual training budgets for all members of the team

Holidays:

20 days - not including public holidays, birthday or our 2 week break over New Years.

Work From Anywhere

Up to 20 days each year

Responsibilities

You'll work across the full breadth of our output — from brand to campaign to content — with motion as a consistent thread running through everything you make.

Key responsibilities include:

- Developing distinctive brand identities: building visual systems that work across identity, digital, social and campaign platforms.

- Designing and producing campaign assets across channels, from hero creative through to social and content formats.

- Bringing brands to life through motion: producing animation, video and motion-led assets for campaigns, social content and digital platforms.

- Creating motion-led brand systems that define how a visual identity moves, transitions and behaves across touchpoints.

- Producing content across a range of formats: static, motion, short-form video, ensuring work always feels native to the platform it lives on.

- Collaborating closely with strategists, creatives and client partners from early concept through to final delivery.

- Contributing to new business pitches and helping shape the creative direction of proposals.

- Presenting your work confidently to internal teams and, where appropriate, to clients.

- Staying genuinely curious: exploring new tools, including AI-assisted design and motion workflows, to improve the quality and speed of your output.

- Supporting and, over time, helping to guide more junior members of the team as the studio grows.

Requirements:

- 3–5 years of experience in a design role within an agency or creative studio.

- A strong portfolio demonstrating brand identity, campaign work and multi-platform design. With exceptional motion work running through it.

- Solid understanding of brand systems. Typography, layout, visual storytelling and how identities stretch across platforms.

- Strong motion design skills and a deep working knowledge of After Effects.

- Proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop) and Figma.

- Experience producing content across formats. Static, motion and short-form video; for social and digital platforms.

- Curiosity about emerging creative technologies, including AI tools and new design platforms. Always looking to expand your toolkit.

- Strong communication skills. You can articulate your creative thinking clearly and confidently.

- A collaborative, low-ego approach: you care about the work and the people making it.

- Any experience managing or mentoring junior designers is a welcome plus, but not a requirement.

Who We Work With

People, brands and organisations that range from household names to challengers looking to make their mark. What unites them? They’re nice people, with big ambitions to impact their industries and who trust us to help them do just that.