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 Backend Engineer

Solace · United States

About Solace

Healthcare in the U.S. is fundamentally broken. The system is so complex that 88% of U.S. adults do not have the health literacy necessary to navigate it without help. Solace cuts through the red tape of healthcare by pairing patients with expert advocates and giving them the tools to make better decisions—and get better outcomes.

We're a Series C startup, founded in 2022 and backed by Inspired Capital, Craft Ventures, Torch Capital, Menlo Ventures, Signalfire, and IVP. Our U.S. based team is lean, mission-driven, and growing quickly.

Solace isn't a place to coast. We're here to redefine healthcare—and that demands urgency, precision, and heart. If you're looking to stretch yourself, sharpen your edge, and do the best work of your life alongside a team that cares deeply, you're in the right place. We’re intense, and we like it that way.

Read more in our Bloomberg funding announcement here.

About the Role

As a Senior Backend Engineer, you'll join a spectacularly talented team of fellow engineers—but you will also be expected to independently own your product workflow from initial design requirements through deployment. You will be expected to move aggressively, and you will commit code daily, but you'll get that rush of seeing your work in the wild with live users on a regular basis as you build a revolutionary product from scratch.

You are an experienced engineer who can identify problems and architect the highest-quality solutions. You are curious and enjoy working on ambiguous problems where the solutions are not (yet) well-defined. You take pride in your craft, have impeccable communication skills, and you absorb feedback exceptionally well. You aren't afraid to make mistakes and learn from them. Above all, you enjoy taking ownership and are stifled by large organizations.


What You'll Do

  • Design and build scalable services and APIs to drive existing and new features for web applications.

  • Architect and maintain robust backend systems, database models, and infrastructure that power our platform.

  • Analyze product requirements and produce high-quality, production-ready code with a focus on system reliability and performance.

  • Maintain the health of our systems and codebase, refactor and make improvements, and keep our systems robust and resilient.

  • Jump into frontend code when needed to support the team and ship features end-to-end.

  • Be autonomous. You'll take full ownership of your work, and you take responsibility and accountability for every last detail, every step of the way.

  • Be a collaborator. You'll work with other engineers and cross-functional partners in product and design to build a world-class product and lead new initiatives to improve our user experience.

  • Write clear specs to ensure product/code quality for stress-free deployment.

  • Drive large releases to production on a continuous deployment cadence.

What You Bring to the Table

  • Experience working in a start-up environment.

  • 5+ years of relevant experience in backend development with some frontend exposure.

  • Strong fundamentals in API design, database architecture, and distributed systems.

  • Expertise in Typescript/Node and backend frameworks.

  • Comfort with React and frontend technologies—you can jump in and contribute when needed, even if it's not your primary focus.

  • An intuitive understanding of what it takes to create performant, scalable systems that power delightful user experiences.

  • Strong communication skills that help you influence product direction and help collaborative visions come to life.

  • Extreme bias toward action and execution. You get antsy if you're not writing code, improving the codebase, and vigilantly enhancing the systems that represent the big-thinking work.

Our Tech Stack

  • Typescript across all our applications

  • NestJS API with TypeORM

  • Postgres

  • Redis

  • Heroku

  • React (for when you need to dabble on the frontend)

  • Custom UI library built on shadcn

  • Tailwind

Applicants must be based in the United States.

Up for the Challenge?

We look forward to meeting you.

Fraudulent Recruitment Advisory: Solace Health will NEVER request bank details or offer employment without an interview. All legitimate communications come from official solace.health emails only or ashbyhq.com. Report suspicious activity to [email protected] or [email protected].