Resume Builder

Understanding your ATS score

What an ATS actually does, what the score measures, and when to stop optimising.

Most employers of any size run applications through an Applicant Tracking System before a person sees them. The ATS parses your file into structured fields and ranks it against the posting. A resume that parses badly can be filtered out before anyone reads a word of it, which is what the score is trying to prevent.

What the score measures

• Keyword match: whether the skills and terms the posting requires actually appear in your resume, in the employer's own wording.
• Format compatibility: whether the layout will parse correctly. Tables, text boxes, columns, headers, and graphics are the usual culprits.
• Section completeness: whether standard sections an ATS looks for (contact details, experience, education, skills) are present and recognisable.

Reading the number

• Above 80: strong. Send it.
• 60 to 80: worth one pass at the specific items flagged.
• Below 60: usually a formatting problem rather than a content one. Check for columns and graphics first.

Improving it honestly

1. Fix formatting first. It is the cheapest win and it never costs you credibility.
2. Add genuinely missing keywords: skills you have and simply did not list.
3. Use the employer's vocabulary for things you have done, rather than your previous company's internal term.
4. Make sure contact details are in the body of the document, not in a header or footer. Many parsers never read those.

Why you should not chase 100

The score measures machine readability, not whether a hiring manager wants to meet you. Past a certain point the only way to push it higher is keyword stuffing, which reads badly to the human who picks up the resume next. A natural 85 beats a stuffed 98 every time, because the ATS is a filter and the human is the decision.