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 .

Lead Engineer - Communities

Gohighlevel · Delhi

About HighLevel HighLevel is a cloud-based, all-in-one white-label marketing and sales platform that empowers marketing agencies, entrepreneurs, and businesses to elevate their digital presence and drive growth. We are proud to support a global and growing community of over 1 million businesses, from marketing agencies to entrepreneurs to small businesses and beyond. Our platform empowers users across industries to streamline operations, drive growth, and crush their goals. HighLevel processes over 15 billion API hits and handles more than 2.5 billion message events every day. Our platform manages 470 terabytes of data distributed across five databases, operates with a network of over 250 micro-services, and supports over 1 million domain names. Our People With over 1,500 team members across 15+ countries, we operate in a global, remote-first environment. We are building more than software; we are building a global community rooted in creativity, collaboration, and impact. We take pride in cultivating a culture where innovation thrives, ideas are celebrated, and people come first, no matter where they call home. Our Impact Every month, our platform powers over 1.5 billion messages, helps generate over 200 million leads, and facilitates over 20 million conversations for the more than 1 million businesses we serve. Behind those numbers are real people growing their companies, connecting with customers, and making their mark - and we get to help make that happen. Learn more about us on our YouTube Channel or Blog Posts About the Role We’re looking for a Lead Software Engineer to join our Communities Team, which empowers businesses and creators to build vibrant, branded spaces where members can connect, share content, and engage in meaningful discussions. Communities power social interaction and collaboration across web and mobile for over 1 million active users, helping creators and agencies deepen relationships with their audiences. As a Lead Engineer, you’ll architect and scale the systems behind posts, feeds, notifications, memberships, and moderation workflows - all while ensuring data security, privacy, and reliability in a multi-tenant environment. You’ll tackle complex problems in real-time updates, multi-tenant access control, and performance optimization while collaborating with product and infrastructure teams to shape the long-term technical roadmap. This role offers the opportunity to deliver a highly engaging experience at scale for the growing creator and business ecosystem. Responsibilities Lead the design and development of scalable, high-performance systems to improve reliability, latency, and throughput across time-sensitive APIs and workflows Own features end-to-end — from architecture and implementation to testing, deployment, and ongoing optimization. Work hands-on with technologies like NestJS, Firestore, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, Queuing Systems and Service Mesh-based microservices. Drive technical direction across both product features and platform layers to ensure stability, scalability, and maintainability. Integrate and optimize AI-assisted development tools, improving developer productivity while ensuring accuracy and minimizing hallucinations. Collaborate closely with Product, Design, and AI teams to deliver impactful, user-facing features and backend systems. Mentor and support other engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence, learning, and ownership. Proactively identify and solve performance bottlenecks, scalability challenges, and security concerns in a multi-tenant environment. Requirements 6+ years of backend engineering experience, including designing fault-tolerant systems and working on high-scale platforms. Deep expertise in distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and asynchronous job processingStrong experience with relational and NoSQL data models (especially with complex temporal data) Experience with modern front-end frameworks (e.g., React, Vue, Angular) and building full-stack web applications. Proven track record of architecting complex systems and delivering scalable, high-performance web apps in production. Strong understanding of software design patterns, API design, and microservices architecture in a multi-tenant environment. Skilled in guiding technical architecture, making high-impact engineering decisions, and mentoring fellow engineers. Experience with code quality practices, automated testing, CI/CD pipelines, and dev tooling optimization. Excellent problem-solving skills, with clear and collaborative communication across cross-functional teams. Preferred Experience Experience with AI Tools and contributions to open-source tools, internal platforms or engineering blogs EEO Statement The company is an Equal Opportunity Employer. As an employer subject to affirmative action regulations, we invite you to voluntarily provide the following demographic information. This information is used solely for compliance with government record keeping, reporting, and other legal requirements. Providing this information is voluntary and refusal to do so will not affect your application status. This data will be kept separate from your application and will not be used in the hiring decision.