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 .

Staff Software Engineer - Front End

Rdccareers · Austin, Texas, United States

Recognized as the No. 1 site trusted by real estate professionals, Realtor.com® has been at the forefront of online real estate for over 25 years, connecting buyers, sellers, and renters with trusted insights and expert guidance to find their perfect home. Through its robust suite of tools, Realtor.com® not only makes a significant impact on the real estate industry at large, but for consumers, navigating the biggest purchase they will make in their life, by providing a user experience that is easy to use, easy to understand, and most of all, easy to make decisions.

Join us on our mission to empower more people to find their way home by breaking barriers to entry, making the right connections, and building confidence through expert guidance.

Are you passionate about modern cloud technologies, programming languages, design patterns and scalable architectures? You’ll be right at home here. The Technology team participates in research and development of highly scalable, data driven, consumer facing applications as well as identifies new technologies and trends and how they might be implemented to enhance our products and business. Work and learn from world-class talent that promotes a culture of data, experimentation and learning. Use the latest technologies such as AWS, Node, React, GraphQL, Flutter and more to accelerate your career growth.

We believe in leveraging the best tools to solve problems faster. You will be expected to utilize AI coding assistants and LLMs proficiently to accelerate development velocity, generate boilerplate, and troubleshoot complex debugging scenarios. Beyond simple usage, this role requires the critical judgment to verify AI-generated outputs for security, performance, and accuracy. You should be comfortable integrating AI tooling into your daily workflow to eliminate repetitive tasks, allowing you to focus on high-impact architectural and strategic engineering challenges.

About the role...

  • Work collaboratively in teams composed of Product Managers, Designers, and Engineers
  • Taking ownership of the overall architecture and development of highly scalable ReactJS frontend application that talk to Node JS API services and Lambda functions
  • Implement dynamic and interactive pages using ReactJS by consuming REST and GraphQL services.
  • This is a high traffic, high velocity application so key skills will involve, SEO, page load performance, effective testing strategies
  • Build backend services around advanced machine learning and predictive analytic models
  • Design and operationalize data pipelines using advanced data architectures deployed on Amazon Web Services
  • Optimize our developer toolchain to support instant provisioning of new services and infrastructure, fully automate deployment, and minimize development friction.
  • Work in a product development process that is primarily Agile/Scrum

About you...

  • A driven software engineer that is motivated to build great products and a great code base in a fast-paced environment
  • Able to take requirements and build something that’s simple yet impactful, minimalistic yet beautiful, extensible yet maintainable.
  • Independent and can manage your own projects and time with ease, all the while setting and managing stakeholder expectations
  • Strong communication skills with a growth and learning mindset
  • Ability to lead other engineers to deliver large scale projects
  • Experience with developing complex software systems using modern frameworks, tools, and systems
  • Experience working across the full technical stack, delivering quality code on both front end and back end
  • Strong analytical thinking and ability to make data-driven decisions
  • Attention to detail, great sense of design, and commitment to beautiful user experiences
  • 8 or more years experience developing software in one or more modern programming languages (e.g. ReactJS/NextJS, Python, Ruby, Go, Node.js, Dart) and five years of front end development experience
  • Experience building single page applications
  • Experience implementing progressive web application and service workers
  • Expert in client-side Javascript, CSS/SaSS and HTML
  • Deep understanding of how to monitor and tune the application performance
  • Deep understanding of how to write SEO friendly react applications
  • Experience building the large scale internet application
  • Exposure to cloud-based architectures, development, and deployment, 
  • Familiarity with cloud technologies such as AWS EC2, ECS, S3, RDS
  • Implement AB tests, measure the impact and derive insights
  • Understanding of computer science fundamentals, schema design, and best practices
  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/Engineering/related field or equivalent professional experience

How we Reward you:

Realtor.com® is committed to investing in the health and well-being of our employees and their families. Our benefits programs include, but are not limited to:

  • Inclusive and Competitive medical, Rx, dental, and vision coverage
  • Family forming benefits
  • 13 Paid Holidays
  • Flexible Time Off
  • 8 hours of paid Volunteer Time off
  • Immediate eligibility into Company 401(k) plan with 3.5% company match
  • Tuition Reimbursement program for degree and non-degreed programs
  • 1:1 personalized Financial Planning Sessions
  • Student Debt Retirement Savings Match program
  • Free snacks and refreshments in each office location

Do the best work of your life at Realtor.com®

Here, you’ll partner with a diverse team of experts as you use leading-edge tech to empower everyone to meet a crucial goal: finding their way home. And you’ll find your way home too. At Realtor.com®, you’ll bring your full self to work as you innovate with speed, serve our consumers, and champion your teammates. In return, we’ll provide you with a warm, welcoming, and inclusive culture; intellectual challenges; and the development opportunities you need to grow.

Diversity is important to us, therefore, Realtor.com® is an Equal Opportunity Employer regardless of age, color, national origin, race, religion, creed, gender, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital status, status as a disabled veteran and/or veteran of the Vietnam Era or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law. In addition, Realtor.com® will provide reasonable accommodations for otherwise qualified disabled individuals.