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 .

Account Executive, SMB

Metaview · London

Metaview is an AI company focused on recruiting. We build AI agents that help world-class companies hire with radically more speed and precision. We automate the toil, and augment the human for companies like Brex, Affirm, Deel, ElevenLabs, and Airtable.

Founded by Siadhal and Shahriar after their experiences scaling Uber and Palantir, we’ve raised over $50m from top-tier investors. Most recently, Google Ventures led our series B. We’re growing 5x YoY, our customers are raving fans of the product, and our story has been covered in Fortune, Forbes, TechCrunch, and The Times.

It’s still day 0: Now is the time to re-engineer how work gets done with AI at the core, and our toughest challenges still lie ahead. We’re looking for people seeking the hardest, most fulfilling work of their lives.

How we work

We operate with one core principle: velocity. In practice, this means we:

  • Optimize everything we do around accelerating rate of learning.

  • Do truly great work

  • Communicate openly and directly, and with full context.

All while maintaining a hard-earned reputation for craft and quality.

The role

We’re growing rapidly in the US, Europe, and beyond. To maximize and capture the demand for our product, we’re adding to our sales team. This will accelerate our growth, deepen our engagement with our community of customers and prospects, and help us set the foundations for a broader build-out of our sales team in 2026.

Key ownership areas:

  • Identify prospects from our product-led growth engine, and upsell them on the benefits of an enterprise plan.

  • Develop expert-level insight on the impact and pragmatic application of AI in the recruiting process.

  • Work at pace to rapidly move customers from first contact, to pitch, to close.

  • Feed your hard-earned learnings from the market into the founders and product team, so we can continue to improve a category-defining product.

  • Build an extensive network by working with the next generation of iconic companies.

What you bring

  • 1+ years of experience in sales, with an early track record of success.

  • Thrived at another fast-paced saas startup or scaleup.

  • Our brand is intelligent, low-bs, authentic and deeply customer-oriented. As a champion for our brand, you’ll need to be these things too.

  • Strong academic track record.

  • Sharp, systematic, resilient, and motivated to win.

  • Happy to work in a hybrid working arrangement. At least 3 days per week in the London office.

What we offer

  • The best co-workers you’ll ever have, in an environment that fosters cohesion, collaboration, and performance.

  • Supreme rate-of-learning as we re-orient how the world works with AI.

  • High compensation, through cash and equity.

  • All the benefits you’d expect and more.

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