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 .

Solutions Engineer

Stytch · San Francisco, California

Stytch is the platform for user authentication and anti-fraud tooling. We make it simple for developers to build complex authentication flows in minutes.

We’re looking for an experienced Solutions Engineer who thrives on educating, problem-solving, and building relationships with developers at industry leading companies. In this role, you will be responsible for understanding the needs of our customers, communicating solution designs, and leading technical evaluations. Throughout that path, you’ll be serving as the auth subject matter expert with our customer’s engineering team to drive a smooth and speedy evaluation.

This is a hybrid, full-time position based in the SF Bay Area. We aren’t looking for someone to be in-office 5 days per week, but are looking for someone who is excited to collaborate in-person on a weekly basis (2-3 days per week in-office).

What Excites You

  • A collaborative environment, working with prospective customers and internal teams to push our product forward

  • Serving as a confident technical resource and voice for our customers

  • Learning — our product suite and problem space is continually evolving, and staying on top of those changes is critical to success

  • Building strong relationships with prospective customers to ensure a successful evaluation

What Excites Us

  • Demonstrated ability to communicate credibly and effectively at all levels; everyone from a CTO to a software engineer

  • Grit — tenacity, curiosity, and drive to find the solution that works for customers and collaborate closely with engineering and product to give feedback and push for new features when needed

  • Ability to read and write code – our product and customers are highly technical and we often share example apps and code snippets to help them understand our product

  • Familiarity with modern web services and APIs. Experience with authentication protocols (SAML/OAuth), MFA, IdP is a bonus

  • Enthusiasm to work in a high-growth environment and to help build processes and tools as needed

Want You’ll Do

  • Lead technical customer conversations to identify, qualify and address customers’ authentication use cases, requirements and constraints

  • Collaborate with the sales team to demonstrate the business and technical value of Stytch

  • Lead technical demos and POCs of Stytch’s authentication platform

  • Codify learnings from customer deployments into repeatable implementation methodologies and playbooks

  • Develop technical domain expertise of authentication and authorization concepts and policies such as SAML, OIDC, and OAuth

  • Partner with our Product organization to help shape our roadmap based on prospect and customer feedback, challenges and growth drivers

Expected on-target earnings (OTE) for this position is between $140,000 - $180,000 with a base/variable split of 80%/20%. The anticipated OTE range is not inclusive of full benefits including equity, health care insurance, time off, paid parental leave, etc. This base salary is accurate based on information at the time of posting. Actual compensation for hired candidates will be determined using a number of factors including experience, skills, and qualifications.

We're looking to hire a GREAT team and that means hiring people who are highly empathetic, ambitious, and excited about building the future of user authentication. You should feel empowered to apply for this role even if your experience doesn't exactly match up to our job description (our job descriptions are directional and not perfect recipes for exactly what we need).

We are committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workspace where everyone (regardless of age, education, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or any personal characteristics) feels like they belong. We look forward to hearing from you!

Learn more about our team and culture here!

Stytch participates in e-verify and will provide the federal government with your form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the United States.

#li-hybrid