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 .

Industrial Sales Rep (Inside Sales)

Maddoxindustrialtransformer · Houston, TX

About Maddox

Maddox is the nation’s leading provider of electrical transformers to the commercial and industrial market, with primary locations in South Carolina, Washington State, Texas, Idaho, and Ohio. We have been recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest-growing companies in America for the past 8 years and counting.

Maddox was founded on Christian values, and we are serious about investing in the people, processes, and culture that make this a great place to work. We build real things, solve real problems, and expect professionalism, competence, and integrity from our team.

Discover more at:
https://www.youtube.com/@MaddoxTransformer
https://www.maddox.com/

About Maddox + You:

You will be an integrated part of a small, but powerful, sales team. You will be using our established sales processes to help commercial and industrial end-users, electrical contractors, and resellers of industrial electrical equipment purchase the right transformer for their project or application.

Reactively, you will be responding to customer requests, understanding their needs, and proposing technical and commercial solutions in a timely manner. You need to be great at solving technical and commercial problems in a fast-paced, data-driven workflow.

Proactively, you will be following up with existing clients or maintaining communication with our network of industry contacts; this is not a cold-calling or hard-selling environment. It's an inside sales role ideally suited to a technically-minded, people-person who excels at providing a high-level of customer service to contractors, engineers, purchasing agents, and industrial/commercial end users.

More about You:

  • You enjoy interacting with people and solving technical and commercial problems.
  • Your clients will be located all across the country, so you need to make a great impression with your communication skills via phone and email.
  • You demonstrate fantastic written communication. You will need to maintain many email conversations each day. If your grammar is poor, or you are slow at writing emails, you will struggle in this role.
  • You are focused and able to maintain good attention to detail.
  • You are savvy with modern software. If you prefer an "old school" (pile of handwritten notes) workflow, you are not a fit for this role.
  • You prefer a healthy team vs. operating as a lone wolf.

Skills & Experience:

We value experience, so if you have 20+ years of related experience, that's great! We're also very good at training new recruits, and are willing to invest in a select number of promising early-career candidates with the right attitude and ambition. Depending on the exact role, technical and engineering degrees may be desired, but not required.

Basics:

  • Full-time. The schedule is generally 7:00 AM - 4:00 PM.
  • Drug-free workplace
  • In-person

Comprehensive Full-Time Benefits, including:

  • 3 Weeks Paid Time Off (PTO) (and an additional week for managers, and an additional week after 5 years).
  • Health & Wellness: Can be taken as traditional insurance, or as cash in lieu of benefits. Benefit amounts vary based on age, family status, and eligibility, but as an example, in most circumstances, an employee with a spouse and 3 kids, would be eligible for $19,200 / year or more.
  • Paid paternity/maternity leave
  • 401k with 100% match up to 8% of wages.
  • Paid holidays, marriage and family gifts to celebrate significant life events, and other reimbursements and voluntary benefits and coverages (such as Vision, Dental, Short Term Disability, Additional Life Insurance, Accident, etc), as eligible.

Pay: Starting range: $88.8k-$92.6k (wages and bonus) plus a comprehensive full-time benefits package that averages more than an additional $20k/year per employee (individual amounts vary on age, family size, and other factors).

Pro Tip: We get a LOT of applicants, so if you want to stand out, write a few sentences telling us what stood out to you, and why you think you'd thrive in this particular opportunity.

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