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 Data Scientist

Tonal · San Francisco, CA

Overview

This Senior Data Scientist will drive causal and machine learning-based analyses to measure the impact of product features on user behavior, engagement, and business outcomes, translating results into clear, actionable recommendations. The role partners closely with product, analytics engineering, and fellow data scientists to build in-house causal inference tools, define KPIs, build production-ready analytical workflows, and deliver high-quality, governed visualizations. Success in this role requires strong statistical judgment, experience with product-driven ML, and a focus on delivering insights that are both trustworthy and immediately usable by cross-functional stakeholders

Key Responsibilities

Causal Inference

  • Design, implement, and productionalize statistically rigorous causal analyses to quantify the impact of product features on user behaviors, engagement metrics, and downstream business outcomes

  • Develop and maintain causal frameworks that link product interventions to behavioral change, engagement shifts, and business performance

  • Select and apply appropriate experimental and observational methods, leveraging regression- and ML-based approaches where appropriate to control for confounding and heterogeneity

  • Validate causal findings through robustness checks, sensitivity analyses, and clear articulation of assumptions and limitations

  • Translate results into clear, actionable recommendations that inform product strategy, marketing decisions, and executive-level prioritization

  • Develop analytical notebooks and workflows that are reproducible, scalable, and suitable for deployment in production environments

KPI Development

  • Partner with product and cross-functional stakeholders to define feature-level engagement and efficacy KPIs aligned with business objectives

  • Incorporate model-derived signals (e.g., predicted engagement, risk scores, uplift estimates) into KPI frameworks where appropriate to improve measurement and decision-making

  • Implement testing, documentation, and versioning practices to ensure KPI definitions are reliable, discoverable, and consistently interpreted

  • Maintain metric documentation and metadata to support self-service analytics and cross-functional consumption

Data Visualization

  • Design and deliver high-quality visualizations in Looker and Databricks that clearly communicate analytical and ML-driven insights without requiring supplemental explanation

  • Ensure visual outputs are intuitive, decision-oriented, and aligned with established data visualization best practices

  • Incorporate generative AI capabilities into visualization and analytics assets where appropriate to improve interpretability and cross-functional adoption

  • Support visualization governance by implementing CI/CD workflows, validation checks, and approval processes to ensure production dashboards meet quality and consistency standards prior to release

Qualifications

  • Strong statistical experience in causal inference methods like Difference in Difference, propensity score matching, regression discontinuity analysis, and randomized control trials to help link product changes to business outcomes

  • Applied experience building and evaluating machine learning models for prediction, segmentation, or uplift in a product or business context

  • Ability to develop reproducible, scalable analytical notebooks and workflows that transition effectively from development to production environments

  • Experience partnering with product teams to define feature-level KPIs and building robust, well-documented dbt models to expose those metrics across analytics layers

  • Strong track record of creating clear, decision-oriented visualizations in tools such as Looker and Databricks that communicate insights unambiguously to cross-functional stakeholders

  • 3-5+ years of experience

  • Tools and libraries: dbt, databricks, statsmodels, scipy, scikit-learn, causalml, prophet

  • Languages: sql, python, r

At Tonal, we believe that the unique and varied lived experiences of our teammates contribute to our overall strength. We don’t just appreciate differences, we celebrate them, and we always seek people that represent a wide variety of backgrounds. We’re dedicated to adding new perspectives to the team and designing employee experiences that contribute to your growth as much as you do to ours. If your experience aligns with what we’re looking for (even if you don’t check every single box), send us your application. We would love to hear from you!

 

Tonal is committed to meeting the diverse needs of people with disabilities in a timely manner that is consistent with the principles of independence, dignity, integration, and equality of opportunity. Should you have any accommodation requests, please reach out to us via our confidential email, [email protected]. All requests will be addressed and responded to in accordance with Tonal’s Accessibility Policy and local legislation.