Simple formatting
An ATS only reads the text layer of your file. They don't see pictures, charts, logos, or text boxes. Use clear, standard fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, or Roboto so the ATS can easily read each character. Simpler is better.
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What is ATS compliance?
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a type of software large organizations use to rank candidates based on their applications, and ATS compliance is the compatibility of a document with these systems. Here's what they look for:
Industry keywords
While modern ATS platforms can identify the meaning of words depending on how they're used in context, standard platforms only focus on the words themselves, prioritizing candidates whose resumes are packed with the most common terms from job descriptions in their field.
Statistical data
Specifying how many people you managed, the size of your budget for a crucial project, or the net worth of a portfolio makes the ATS more likely to recommend you to human recruiters by giving it a concrete metric through which to evaluate your experience, aptitude, and leadership.
What does your resume look like to a machine?
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You apply to a specific job, so the check is run against one. The role sets which industry keywords are looked for, and how much of your score rests on measurable results.
- Runs offline. Disconnect your wi-fi and it still works.
- No account, no email. Full results, no gate.
- Nothing retained. Close the tab and it's gone.
0%
ATS Compatibility
Analysing…
Takes everything we just read from your document straight to the contact form, already filled in.
The Diagnosis
What to fix, in order
Ranked by how much each one costs you. Dealbreakers first, they cap your score no matter how strong everything else is.
The Proof
What the machine actually reads
On the left is the plain text a parser extracts from your file, in the order it reads it. On the right is your document as a person sees it. Where the two disagree, the left one wins.
Raw ATS view
Your document
How your score is calculated
No black box. Here's the whole formula.
1 Three measures, weighted
The three aspects of ATS compliance (formatting, keywords, and data) are each rated out of 100 and combined to form a final score. Data has more weight in the calculation for roles of increasing responsibility, as leaders are often required to measure the efficiency of their teams and systems through extensive reports.
Individual contributor
Supervisor or manager
Director
Senior leader or executive
Formatting carries the most weight because it is the only one of the three that can lose your content outright. Inside it, whether the file can be read at all counts for 60%, and using section headings a system recognizes counts for the other 40%: one loses the words, the other only misfiles them.
The keywords come from your target job. Each job title corresponds to an occupation in O*NET, a record from the U.S. Department of Labor detailing the certifications, knowledge, skills, and tools used in the American workforce. Certifications are weighted twice as strong (50%) as the other categories (25% each) since they're required to get the job, whereas the others can be learned on site.
Including quantified metrics is important, but not equally important for everyone: budgets, headcounts and portfolio values are critical for quality leadership, but a warehouse associate, stylist, or paralegal can write an excellent resume using a handful of figures. Therefore, the weight for this aspect is distributed across the corporate ladder. The best rule of thumb is to include a number in two of five bullet points. On a one-page resume of twenty bullets, that makes eight figures across the page, or about two per role.
2 Dealbreakers cap the total
A fault that scrambles or deletes content does not get averaged against good writing. It sets a hard ceiling on the whole score, however well everything else scores.
- 1 dealbreakermax 55
- 2 dealbreakersmax 45
- 3 or moremax 35
A beautifully written resume whose skills section is a graphic is not an 85 with a footnote. That section arrives empty, and averaging that against strong prose produces a comfortable number that tells you to change nothing. When your score is capped, the results page says so and names the reason.
3 What the number means
- 0–49At risk Likely to be filtered out before a person reads it.
- 50–69Needs work Gets through some systems, mishandled by others.
- 70–84Good Parses reliably; a few targeted changes left.
- 85–100Excellent Read the way you intended, everywhere.
Scores are calibrated against real failure risk rather than graded generously. A resume whose words lift cleanly out of the file genuinely lands in the eighties or nineties; one that hides its content in images or text boxes genuinely lands in the forties, because that is what happens to it. How a resume is laid out is not the question. Whether the text survives the trip is.
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