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, ML Training Infrastructure

Stackav · Pittsburgh, PA or Remote

About Stack:

Stack is developing revolutionary AI and advanced autonomous systems designed to enhance safety, reliability, and efficiency of modern operations. Stack's autonomous technology incorporates cutting-edge advancements in artificial intelligence, robotics, machine learning, and cloud technologies, empowering us to create innovative solutions that address the needs and challenges of the dynamic trucking transportation industry. With decades of experience creating and deploying real world systems for demanding environments, the Stack team is dedicated to developing an autonomous solution ecosystem tailored to the trucking industry's unique demands.

About the Role:

In the ML Training, our mission is to provide a reliable, scalable, and easy to use training framework for modeling needs of Stack AV. In addition, this team is responsible for the overall developer experience of ML engineers including building tools for testing, validation, and understanding models and the data used to train them. Finally, we are responsible for model optimization and deployment.

Responsibilities: 

  • Experience with both ML Platforms and building ML-based applications.
  • Experience building scalable, reliable infra at a fast-paced environment working with MLEs on several different modeling teams.
  • A deep understanding of design tradeoffs and ability to articulate those tradeoffs and work with others on getting alignment.
  • Experience with building ML models or ML infra in the domains of autonomous vehicles, perception, and decision making (desirable but not required).
  • Experience with model training, model optimization, or large data processing pipelines.

Qualifications: 

  • Built an end to end ML model pipeline including components such as logs processing, feature extraction, dataset storage, model configuration management, model training, experiment frameworks, and serving deployment.
  • Shipped ML products (NLP, computer vision, recommender systems, etc.) at scale to make business impact
  • Knows how to build appropriate abstractions and tooling to ensure MLEs are able to rapidly iterate on models.
  • Prior AV experience

#LI-AW1

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Please Note: Pursuant to its business activities and use of technology, Stack AV complies with all applicable U.S. national security laws, regulations, and administrative requirements, which can restrict Stack AV’s ability to employ certain persons in certain positions pursuant to a range of national security-related requirements. As such, this position may be contingent upon Stack AV verifying a candidate’s residence, U.S. person status, and/or citizenship status. This position may also involve working with software and technologies subject to U.S. export control regulations. Under these regulations, it may be necessary for Stack AV to obtain a U.S. government export license prior to releasing its technologies to certain persons. If Stack AV determines that a candidate’s residence, U.S. person status, and/or citizenship status will require a license, prohibit the candidate from working in this position, or otherwise be subject to national security-related restrictions, Stack AV expressly reserves the right to either consider the candidate for a different position that is not subject to such restrictions, on whatever terms and conditions Stack AV shall establish in its sole discretion, or, in the alternative, decline to move forward with the candidate’s application.

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