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 .

Marketing Data Scientist

Recast · Remote

We're hiring a Marketing Data Scientist to help us build the future of media measurement. This role will be focused on maximizing the value clients get out of Recast through a combination of client-facing consulting and internal development.

What you'll do in your first 6 months:

  • Perform complex data analyses and present the results to clients to help them interpret and action on the insights from the Recast model.
  • Onboard new clients onto Recast's platform,work hand-in-hand with them to set priors, interpret results, and plan experiments to validate the model.
  • Develop and manage data pipelines in R
  • Identify and enact process improvements to improve efficiency across the data science team

Things you probably have experience in:

  • Presenting results of your analyses to both technical and non-technical audiences
  • Use of R for data cleaning and exploratory data analysis
  • Basic statistic and experimental methods
  • 2+ years of experience working as a data analyst or data scientist

Bonus points:

  • Marketing data science and media performance measurement
  • Partnering directly with marketers to shape budgets and structure tests
  • Experience with Bayesian statistical modeling

Things that should excite you that might scare off other folks:

  • Working directly with marketers on applying modeling result to marketing strategy
  • Contributing directly to product direction and business strategy
  • Working with a team of math-loving statistics nerds
  • Exploring the output of a complex statistical model with over 30k parameters
  • Opportunity for ownership in a fast-growing company at the cutting-edge of a multi-billion dollar industry

Our Hiring Process for this role:

  • Intro Call (30mins)
  • Take Home Assignment (1-2 days given)
  • Technical Interview & Assignment Discussion w/ Charlie Radke or Jeff Strome (1hr)
  • Final Interview w/ Thomas Vladeck

What we offer you:

  • Work wherever you’re happiest. We're fully remote. This role is required to overlap with US Eastern Time zone hours
  • Competitive remote salary along with early stage equity
  • Your local holidays plus unmetered PTO (minimum 2 weeks mandatory PTO!)
  • Minimal standing meetings with frequent collaboration and async by design
  • Autonomy and support to do your best work in your own time

Note: Recast is committed to building a diverse team so if you are from an under-represented background in tech (e.g., women, non-white, etc.) please apply even if you don’t necessarily check all of the boxes here.

While Recast is officially based in the US, we're a fully remote team (one founder lives in Brooklyn, the other in Mexico City and team members in 6+ countries around the world). This role is required to work in alignment with US EST zone.

If this sounds interesting to you, we'd love to learn more about you!

Please note salary ranges are estimated for US-based employees. Candidates from other geographies may have the salary range adjusted based on their local markets.

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