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 .

Senior Software Engineer, Payments Team

Rover · Seattle

Who we are: 
Want to make an impact? Join our pack and come work (and play!) with us.

We believe everyone deserves the unconditional love of a pet—and at Rover, our mission is to make it easier to experience that love. Founded in 2011, the Rover app and website connect dog and cat parents with loving pet sitters and dog walkers in neighborhoods across the US, Canada, and Europe. We empower our community of trusted pet sitters and dog walkers to run their own pet care businesses on Rover with the tools and security of a global company to back them.

Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, we work closely with our teams in Barcelona, San Antonio, Spokane, and remote locations. We’ve got a reputation for being a great place to work, having been named among the 100 Best Companies to Work For in Seattle Business Magazine and Washington’s Best Workplaces in the Puget Sound Business Journal. We're an agile, fast-growing company, and our leadership comes from some of the world's most respected tech companies. 

At Rover, our furry coworkers are just as important as our human ones—and we wouldn’t have it any other way. Along with making the joys of pet parenthood more accessible, we’re committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive, and welcoming community of pet people—and that starts with our employees.

This is a hybrid position that has the minimum expectation to work out of our Downtown Seattle Office two days per week on Mondays and Thursdays. For this reason, candidates must be based in the Greater Seattle Area or willing to relocate.

 
Meet the Payments team:
We are the Payments team dedicated to bringing a convenient, secure, and successful payments experience to Rover customers on our platform. Our team’s directives are to:
 
  • Provide a robust payments platform to support business growth - we continue to improve our platform by expanding our payment offerings, optimizing checkout flows, and reducing our bottom line expenses with high-impact and high-visibility projects.
  • Ensure customers can pay and providers get paid promptly - We own the integrations with our payment service providers, ensure PCI compliance, and provide a great customer experience for all the money that flows through our marketplace, including payins & payouts.
  • Ensure financial transaction completeness, accuracy, and auditability.

This is a hybrid position that has the minimum expectation to work out of our Downtown Seattle Office two days per week on Mondays and Thursdays. For this reason, candidates must be based in the Greater Seattle Area or willing to relocate.

 
Meet the Payments team:
We are the Payments team dedicated to bringing a convenient, secure, and successful payments experience to Rover customers on our platform. Our team’s directives are to:
 
  • Provide a robust payments platform to support business growth - we continue to improve our platform by expanding our payment offerings, optimizing checkout flows, and reducing our bottom line expenses with high-impact and high-visibility projects.
  • Ensure customers can pay and providers get paid promptly - We own the integrations with our payment service providers, ensure PCI compliance, and provide a great customer experience for all the money that flows through our marketplace, including payins & payouts.
  • Ensure financial transaction completeness, accuracy, and auditability.
At Rover, we’re driven by seeing our people succeed and grow, while doing our jobs better than ever before. We believe the best business outcomes come from a diverse set of perspectives and we’re committed to promoting an inclusive, inventive, and fun environment with amazing employees. We welcome and encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply. 

Rover is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all qualified applicants without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, military or veteran status, sex, pregnancy, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital or partnership status, genetic predisposition, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws.

We are committed to work with you to look for reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request accommodation.

We’re looking for engineers who:

  • Enjoy seeing their own efforts have an outsized impact on the business and our customers.

  • Are eager to learn and improve their craft as a software engineer.

  • Are excited to learn new technologies and contribute across the stack.

  • Are passionate about building a deep understanding of how Rover’s systems behave and use that insight to identify risks and opportunities.

  • Analyze and understand production issues, dig into root causes, and make improvements to our systems.

  • Are able to take loose requirements, work with others to figure out what needs to be done, and drive a project forward.

  • Enjoy working across the backend and frontend on both web and mobile, developing software that interacts with other systems.

  • Understand the needs of multiple stakeholders, from end users to internal teams such as tax and accounting. 

  • Have strong attention to detail and a desire to deeply understand complex technical systems.

  • Get along well with others and thrive in a collaborative environment and your values align with Rover's Core Values

  • Enjoy being part of a great community of pet lovers.

Your Qualifications:

  • Minimum 5+ years experience as a professional software developer.

  • Strong understanding of data-intensive application design and architecture principles.

  • Strong problem-solving skills and a passion for debugging complex issues.

  • Proficiency in working with Python.

  • Familiarly with React and React Native.

  • Familiarity with SQL.

  • Familiarity with relational databases and schema design.

  • Excellent verbal and written communication skills

  • Ability to work effectively in a collaborative team environment

  • Effective communication on design/engineering trade-offs to product managers/designers.

  • Intuition for when to call it "good enough", and when to put in the extra time to polish.

  • Passionate about automated testing, code quality, and engineering best practices

  • Rigor, attention to detail, curiosity, and always asking Why?

  • Experience with large-scale consumer-facing websites

  • Bonus: Experience with large-scale orders and finance systems that handle money, payments, tax, checkout, etc.

Our Style:

  • We are proud to be professional software developers building high quality, scalable and supportable solutions.

  • We are curious and passionate about learning, providing the right environment and resources for professional growth.

  • We are committed to building, fostering and maintaining a culture of inclusivity and diversity both on our teams and in our products.

  • We embrace progressive engineering practices including automated testing and a continuous deployment pipeline.

  • We are serious about the quality of our production operation, and have thorough system, application and user interaction monitoring and anomaly detection.

  • We are passionate about data-driven decision-making.

  • We are friendly, supportive and respectful, and we pay attention to the impact and quality of our work as well as keeping work/life balance.

  • And, dogs in the office. Bring yours, too!

Benefits of Working at Rover.com

  • Competitive compensation

  • 401k

  • Flexible PTO

  • Competitive benefits package, including medical, dental, and vision insurance

  • Commuter benefits

  • Bring your dog to work (and unlimited puppy time)

  • Doggy benefits, including $1000 toward adopting your first dog

  • Stocked fridges, coffee, soda, and lots of treats (for humans and dogs) and free catered lunches semi-monthly 

  • Regular team activities performed in person and virtually