How the ATS check works

Applicant tracking systems do two things with your file: they extract text and they match terms against the posting. Our check tests both, locally and deterministically — the same document always gets the same findings, and every finding shows what triggered it.

1. Parseability

• Real text, not images: every template exports selectable, extractable text; photos are optional and never carry information.
• Standard section headings (Experience, Education, Skills…) in the document language, so section detection works.
• A reading order that survives extraction: the ten ATS templates are single-column; two-column designs keep the main column first.
• Dates in one consistent format and a complete header (name, email, phone, city).

2. Content quality

• Bullets that start with a verb and carry an outcome; we flag filler words and bullets without a result.
• Summary length, duplicated skills, missing dates, unexplained gaps in the last ten years.
• Placeholders such as [amount] or [team size] left in the text are listed so nothing unfinished gets sent.

3. Match (only with a job posting)

Attach the posting (paste or URL). We extract its required skills, tools and seniority terms and show which ones appear in your resume and which are missing — each with the sentence in the posting it came from. Without a posting there is no match percentage: a number without a reference would be noise.

What we do not do

• We do not claim a universal "ATS score" — every company's system is different.
• We do not promise interviews or hiring outcomes.
• We never add terms you cannot back up. Suggestions in the Improve tab rewrite your own facts and leave placeholders where a number is missing.

Open the check from the editor's Improve tab. It runs on your current document in a second and updates as you edit.