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 .

Product Designer

Slant · Lehi, Utah

About Slant

Our company (Pageport, Inc.) is launching a new product called Slant — an AI-powered CRM built specifically for financial advisors with the mission of helping 20M Americans make better financial decision by increasing the capacity of financial advisors by 50-100%.

We believe AI is the most transformative technology of our lifetimes, and that every “legacy” software product will be completely reimagined over the next 5 years with deeply integrated, vertical-specific AI replacements. And there is no software category more ready to be burned down and rebuilt than CRM.

CRM is the most widely adopted software in the world — and also the most hated. It over-promises, under-delivers, and is universally painful to use. Every business runs differently and pleasing a single customer often results in frustration for three others. The result is pages and pages of settings, confusing interfaces, and software that requires full-time consultants to manage.

We believe there’s a better way.

We’re completely rebuilding and rethinking the CRM from the ground up. In order to do that, weneed to make tasteful decisions on what product suggestions really mean and the true best way to solve core problems.

For example, does the customer really need a custom field for "favorite drink", or do they just want to tell the AI assistant to remember it? Do we really need 10 step workflows, or is there one job that needs to be done? Do they really want a report builder or do they just want to chat and find all their clients with a birthday next week?

To answer these questions well, we need amazing people. Reimagining familiar UX patterns with AI-driven patterns that still feel familiar / are easy to use is an extremely difficult design challenge. Many of our most difficult design decisions are not something you go pull good examples from Mobbin and make a mood board. These are new interactions that are being created every day, so creativity and passion for frontier technology is a must.

Design at Slant

We want to build a product that feels inevitable. That means world-class design is a non-negotiable. Design defines how people feel about the product. It’s not a polish layer — it is the product. Some of the products we take inspiration from include Attio, ChatGPT, Linear, and Clerk. We use Shad as our foundational design system.

Until now, design has been led by our founder (👋 Max here). While we’ve managed to punch above our weight, we’re ready to bring in someone who does this full-time — someone who’s obsessed with craft, relentless about simplification, and excited to design systems that make AI feel invisible and intuitive.

Designers at Slant are not pixel pushers or aesthetic advisors. You’ll lead product discovery, work directly with customers, and shape how entire workflows function in an AI-native world. You’ll design the product’s future and work closely with engineering in the implementation of said design. I think of this role as a designer / good parts of PM hybrid (no making and management of Jira tickets 🤦‍♂️).

This is a zero-to-one design role — and we want someone who wants to own it all: design systems, interaction flows, prototypes, customer calls, microcopy, visuals, and polish.

The pace of design here is fast, likely unlike anything you've previously experienced. Projects that take a team a sprint are usually scoped to 2-3 days. Design needs to make big 80/20 decisions on where to build a Figma mockup and vs when to just have a conversation with the engineer.

Requirements

  • Bachelor’s degree in any field that led you to an absolute love and passion for product and design

  • 3–5 years of professional product design experience, preferably at a startup or fast-moving company

  • Experience designing scalable design systems and working within the constraints a good design system provides

  • Impeccable taste

  • Must be willing to work hard, in-person, 5 days/week at our office in Lehi, Utah

Salary & Benefits

  • $120,000 – $160,000 / year + benefits + equity

  • 100% employer-covered health insurance

  • Company-sponsored 401(k)

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