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 .

Applied NLP Engineer

Unwrap · Santa Barbara

Do you love to build? Are you one of the most ambitious people you know? If so, you'll be right at home at Unwrap.

We are seeking an Applied NLP Engineer who has a specific interest in building customer-facing technology for extracting actionable insights from large scale customer feedback. Our customers are some of the world's best companies, from Github to Stripe to Oura to Microsoft. These teams rely on Unwrap to analyze millions of pieces of customer feedback and inform them where they need to focus.

You’ll own and deliver major customer-facing solutions end-to-end. This includes understanding customer needs, helping compile sprint requirements, and ultimately shipping core NLP features. You’ll get exposure to all aspects of the company, from sales to marketing to customer success, but you’d focus primarily on designing and building NLP features that drive the product and the insights we deliver forward.

This is an in-person role in beautiful Santa Barbara, CA. Our office is downtown, walking distance to great restaurants, coffee shops, and the beach.

Who We Are

Unwrap.ai is on a mission to fill the world with products people love. We’re helping companies like Lyft, Stripe, Oura, Microsoft, Perplexity, and Github collect and process feedback more effectively. We ingest feedback from thousands of sources (support channels, surveys, social), and use state-of-the-art NLP technology to extract actionable insights for customers across software, hardware, and retail sectors.

We’re currently a team of 20, based in Santa Barbara, and growing quickly. We are venture-backed, and just raised our $12M Series A from world-leading VCs.

Our founders, two ex-Amazon Alexa Product Managers, were tired of manually sifting through customer reviews, support tickets, and bugs while working on Alexa. They understood the importance of listening to customers and prioritizing their requests effectively, but simply had too much feedback to parse through. So, Unwrap.ai was born to solve this problem. Specifically, at Unwrap we use Natural Language Processing to automatically cluster, tag, and analyze customer feedback to help product and engineering teams build what customers want. The ultimate goal is to better connect users and builders, so builders can fill the world with products people love.

Our small team is extremely motivated, hard-working, and simply gets stuff done. If this sounds exciting, we can't wait to read your application.

What You Bring

  • You have 2+ years experience building real-world NLP solutions

  • You pride yourself on developing high quality product that solve real customer problems.

  • You are first and foremost a builder and are excited about the idea of spending 80%+ of your time actively developing software.

  • You own what you build and take pride in shipping robust high quality software.

  • You're not afraid of ambiguous product requirements.

  • You're comfortable meeting with customers.

What You Get

  • Ground floor impact at an early-stage startup with tremendous latitude over technical strategy and approach

  • Significant, potentially life-changing equity

  • Report directly to a founder of the company

  • Ability to rapidly advance your career alongside company growth

  • Collaborate with experienced teammates, entrepreneurs, and advisors

  • Work directly with enterprise customers to ideate and develop solutions

View full listing