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 .

Product Engineer, Bookface

Ycombinator · San Francisco Bay Area

Y Combinator is run by a small team that is committed to helping founders start the next Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, or Doordash.  We work out of the same campus in San Francisco that we run the batch in.  We also operate according to the same principles we teach our startups - so if you've read Paul Graham's essays or watched our videos on YouTube, you can already predict what it would be like to work here.  Working at YC places you in the center of the startup world.

About the role

To manage the YC program at scale, we write lots of software. The Bookface team specifically focuses on building YC’s most critical tools to help founders through the batch – and well afterwards. Some projects we’re working on:

  • Bookface. Software that helps operate and manage the day-to-day batch, including event programming, office hours, pitch prep, and more. Every company that goes through the batch relies on this software to get the most out of their YC experience. 

  • Forums & Alumni Directory. Helps founders get the best advice and feedback on how to build their startup – from technical advice, customer acquisition, fundraising, and more.

  • Demo Day investor portal. Matching founders and investors for early seed fundraising, with billions of dollars resulting from the connections we’ve made through our platform. 

  • Launch YC. A public platform for YC founders to get early customers and product feedback from both other YC alumni and the broader public. 

About the team

Our whole software team is only 15 full-stack product engineers, and we enjoy working in a small team with high impact and knowing each other by name. We have a broad range of experiences from bigger companies like Meta and Google, and many of us have started startups ourselves. True to YC advice, our product engineers talk to our customers regularly and ship fast. We also define our own roadmap and often design our own products when needed. 

Our stack is pretty straightforward (Rails, React, Postgres), and the last three engineers have learned it on the job. That said, we’ve found that enjoying front-end software development is key to being successful here, so it’s almost a requirement for the role. Our needs as an organization require a large degree of flexibility, and people change teams quite often. 

Lastly: If you’re interested in starting your own startup one day: eight former engineers on our team have gone on to start YC-funded startups.  If you want to start your own startup someday but aren’t ready to do it now, working at YC could be an excellent way to get there. 

Location: This is an in-person role at YC's campus in Dogpatch, San Francisco. This is where our users (founders, partners, and employees) are five days a week, so it’s optimal for you to be here with them. You must live in the SF Bay Area or be willing to relocate.  We offer generous relocation support for those who want to move to SF to work here.

Compensation: $250K to $500K base salary, depending on experience. YC has a profit-sharing program, which is comparable to equity in an early-stage startup or carry in a VC fund.

Benefits: Our full benefits package includes medical, vision, and dental plans, infertility benefit, STD/LTD, life insurance, commuter benefits, flexible spending account, health savings account, 401(k) + 4% matching, generous parental leave, paid holidays, and flexible paid time off policy.

Work Authorization: Y Combinator is willing to sponsor certain employment visas in accordance with company policy.

Legal note: Y Combinator considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law, including San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance. Y Combinator is committed to protecting the privacy of the personal information of job applicants and complying with the California Consumer Privacy Act. The privacy policy of Ashby, Inc., the hiring platform used by Y Combinator, governs the collection of such data and can be found here.