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 Manager, Growth Marketing

Zola · New York

We’re looking for an experienced, all-star growth marketer to join Zola’s Growth Marketing team.

Growth Marketing is a core driver of Zola’s success, focused on acquiring new couples and accelerating signups across a diverse set of channels. This team fuels the top of the funnel — bringing the right couples into the Zola ecosystem at scale and setting the foundation for their entire planning journey.

The ideal candidate is a seasoned growth leader who brings deep channel expertise, sharp analytical instincts, and strong business judgment. As a Senior Manager, you’ll own and evolve our upper-funnel strategy, ensuring our investments drive meaningful, measurable growth and are tightly aligned with Zola’s broader business objectives.

RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Develop the overall channel strategy for paid social and upper-funnel acquisition (including but not limited to Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, Audio, Streaming, OOH), ensuring the plan is clearly aligned with and supported by the overall marketing strategy.
  • Translate specific business strategies into a channel-level marketing plan that prioritizes high-value activities.
  • Direct external agencies and partners in the launching of campaigns, ensuring they have the inputs (creative, copy, editorial mix) needed to execute Zola-specific strategies.
  • Own the creative briefing process, delivering strong, objective briefs based on a deep understanding of the channel, customer mindset, and historical performance. 
  • Drive channel-level experimentation roadmaps by developing robust testing frameworks, identifying high-impact variables (creative, audience, landing page), and overseeing the end-to-end execution of channel tests.
  • Own the end-to-end testing analysis, ensuring that every experiment is grounded in a rigorous hypothesis and results in a clear, data-backed "so-what" for the business.
  • Synthesize complex test results into actionable insights and communicate to the broader team, applying specific learnings from key campaigns to broader marketing approaches.
  • Foster a culture of continuous improvement, always pushing to test new approaches that deepen our understanding of the customer and the business.
  • Ensure Zola’s upper funnel channels remain at the forefront of broader trends, channel changes and shifts in customer behavior.
  • Represent Zola in managing relationships with key strategic partners and channel platforms, leading negotiations and serving as a key point of escalation.

BACKGROUND

  • 6-8 years of experience in growth marketing,  ideally with deep experience in paid social
  • An analytical leader who maintains an intense attention to detail and is always looking for the broader business impact in the data.
  • A structured critical thinker with the ability to prioritize and make trade-offs to ensure execution on priority business goals.
  • An excellent communicator who can translate complex analysis into clear, compelling narratives for stakeholders and executives.
  • Autonomous & solution-oriented, with a proven ability to thrive in ambiguity and create processes that move the needle.
  • A collaborative team player who embodies Zola’s culture, fostering a high performance environment through solution driven problem solving 

The salary range for this position is $125,000-145,000.

ABOUT ZOLA

We're Zola, the wedding company that will do anything for love. We're reinventing the wedding planning and registry experience to make the happiest moment in our couples' lives even happier. From engagement to wedding and decorating your first home, Zola is there, combining compassionate customer service with modern tools and technology… all in the service of love.

We built our entire platform from the ground-up in 2013, and quickly became the fastest-growing wedding company in the country. Our team has deep experience creating award-winning online and mobile products that are helpful, intuitive, and simply magical. We're proud to have investor partners including Female Founders Fund, Comcast Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Canvas Ventures, Thrive Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, among others.

We are passionate about supporting all forms of love, and we're proud of our thriving community of over 2 million couples. We strive to hire a team that is as beautifully diverse as the couples getting married today, and we encourage individuals from every race, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, ethnicity, marital status, religion and perspective to apply. Zola will always be a place where every employee, couple, wedding guest, wedding vendor, and partner will be respected and accepted and valued.

Our headquarters is in NYC. Come work with us!