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 .

Principal Software Engineer

Pointclickcare · Mississauga, Ontario

At PointClickCare our mission is simple: to help providers deliver exceptional care. And that starts with our people. As a leading health tech company that’s founder-led and privately held, we empower our employees to push boundaries, innovate, and shape the future of healthcare. With the largest long-term and post-acute care dataset and a Marketplace of 400+ integrated partners, our platform serves over 30,000 provider organizations, making a real difference in millions of lives. We also reinvest a significant percentage of our revenue back into research and development, ensuring our employees have the resources to innovate and make a lasting impact. Recognized by Forbes as a top private cloud company and honored as one of Canada’s Most Admired Corporate Cultures, we offer flexibility, growth opportunities, and meaningful work.  At PointClickCare, we empower our people to be the architects of a smarter healthcare future; one that is human-first and accelerated by AI to create meaningful and lasting change. Employees harness AI as a catalyst for creativity, productivity, and thoughtful decision-making. By integrating AI tools into our daily workflows, collaboration is enhanced, outcomes are improved, and every team member has the proficiency to maximize their impact. It all starts with our hiring practices where we uncover AI expertise that complements our mission, and we continue to invest in training and development to nurture innovation throughout the employee journey. Join us in redefining healthcare — so it doesn’t just survive, it thrives. To learn more about PointClickCare, check out Life at PointClickCare and connect with us on Glassdoor and LinkedIn. **Travel to Office expectations** For Remote Roles: If this role is remote, there will be in-office events that will require travel to and from the Mississauga and/or Salt Lake City office. These will include, but not limited to, onboarding, team events, semi-annual and annual team meetings. For Hybrid Roles: If this role is Hybrid, there will be an expectation to reside within commutable distance to the office/location specified in the job listing. This will include, but not limited to, weekly/bi-weekly/monthly events in the office with your specific team. This is a requirement for this role. PointClickCare is searching for a Principal Software Engineer who will contribute to best practice application development by writing and rigorously defending production-grade code on a regular basis, while also encouraging and optimizing the daily execution of technical excellence across an empowered Scrum team. This is a hands-on leadership role, requiring the ability to design and implement features from the ground-up while mentoring other team members and delivering both business and technical objectives through ambiguity and uncertainty. To succeed as a Principal Software Engineer at PointClickCare, you need to be collaborative, adventurous and passionate. Collaborative means that you’re enthusiastic about jumping in to help achieve the team’s top priorities, no self-promoting politicians allowed. Adventurous means that you’re not afraid to dive into uncharted technical territory and get your own hands dirty while supporting and driving delivery of complex features through a dedicated Scrum team. Passionate means that you’re eager to learn and share knowledge that drives the team forward and excited to be part of a movement that is positively impacting the lives of seniors and their caregivers all over North America   What your day-to-day will look like: ·       Identify, prioritize and execute tasks in the software development life cycle ·       Work with business to iterate over software requirements ·       Develop tools and applications by producing clean, efficient code ·       Automate tasks through appropriate tools and scripting ·       Analyze and debug systems ·       Perform validation and verification testing in a test-driven manner ·       Review the work of others, and invite others to review your work ·       Collaborate with internal teams and vendors to fix and improve products ·       Ensure software is up-to-date with latest technologies   What qualifications we’re looking for: ·       Experience writing clean code that performs well at scale using Java. Experience with UI development and React frameworks. ·       Experience with Spring Boot ·       In-depth knowledge of relational databases (e.g. Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL) ·       Solid experience writing RESTful API endpoints ·       Absolutely love TDD and have working knowledge of it ·       Proficient in GIT ·       Experience using system and performance monitoring tools (e.g. New Relic, DataDog) ·       Experience with automated testing frameworks (e.g. Selenium, Cypress, RestAssured) ·       Excellent organization, critical-thinking and personal leadership skills ·       Self-starter with the ability to deliver with minimal supervision ·       Being okay with the uncomfortable feeling that comes from learning new things ·       Team player ·       Analytical mind with problem-solving aptitude ·       Proven experience as a great Engineer ·       BSc/BA in Computer Science or a related degree Generative AI Code Assistants - Use of Generative AI Code Assistants (e.g. Github Copilot) and knowledge of latest Generative AI Model capabilities would be an asset   Bonus points for: ·       Nice to have Selenium automation and cloud experience ·       Experience with Docker, Kubernetes and Istio ·       Experience with Ansible ·       Experience with Jenkins CI/CD pipeline ·       Linux and IP networking knowledge ·       Experience with AWS/Azure cloud services or equivalent ·       Experience with SAML, OAuth and OpenID Connect ·       Experience working on a SaaS product ·       Experience with Service Oriented Architecture  ·       Knowledge of scripting languages such as Python, Bash or Groovy ·       On-call experience with production grade systems ·       Has mentored others in a professional setting #LI-AV1 #LI-Hybrid