How we score ATS readiness
Our ATS score is fully transparent and deterministic — the same resume always gets the same score. It is job-agnostic: it measures whether your resume parses cleanly and survives an applicant tracking system, independent of any specific job. No AI guesswork, just published rules.
Methodology version 1.0 · scores are out of 100.
Contact info
15 ptsA detectable email and phone number, plus a name. ATS route candidates by these — missing contact details can drop you from the pipeline.
Standard sections
20 ptsRecognisable Experience, Education and Skills headings — worth 8, 6 and 6 points. ATS map your resume onto known sections; non-standard headings get mis-filed.
Parseability
20 ptsText extracts cleanly — not an empty scanned image, not jumbled column bleed, and a low ratio of non-standard glyphs. If a machine cannot read the text, none of the rest matters.
Dates
15 ptsExperience and education entries carry parseable date ranges in standard formats (e.g. "Jan 2020 – Mar 2023"). ATS build your timeline from these.
Length & density
15 ptsWord count in a healthy band (~400–1200), bullets present, and not a wall of text. Too short reads as thin; too long buries signal.
Formatting hygiene
15 ptsStandard bullet characters, no table- or column-like structures, and no excessive special characters or emoji. Tables and multi-column layouts are the most common cause of ATS mis-parsing.
Grades
A ≥ 90 · B ≥ 75 · C ≥ 60 · D below 60.
What the score measures — and what it does not
An applicant tracking system does something simple and unforgiving: it extracts the text from your file, sorts it into fields such as contact details, work history and education, and builds a timeline from your dates. Recruiters then search and filter that extracted copy. If the extraction goes wrong, they are searching a scrambled version of you.
The ATS score measures how well your resume survives that extraction. It does not measure whether you are a good fit for a particular job, how strong your achievements are, or how well you match a posting's keywords. Those depend on the role, so they belong to a match analysis against a specific job description. A resume can score 95 here and still be a poor match for a role — and the reverse. Use both.
How to read your grade
Grade A · 90–100
Your resume parses cleanly. Every section, date and contact detail is where software expects to find it. Spend your time on content, not formatting.
Grade B · 75–89
Readable, with one or two issues — typically an unusual heading or an inconsistent date format. Worth the ten minutes it takes to fix.
Grade C · 60–74
Several factors lost points. Parts of your resume are likely to be mis-filed or dropped when a system imports it. Fix these before you apply anywhere.
Grade D · below 60
A serious parsing problem — most often a scanned image with no text layer, or a multi-column or table layout. The content may be strong, but software is not seeing it.
Why the score is deterministic
Many resume scores are produced by an AI model, which means the same file can score differently on two different days and nobody can tell you exactly why. We made the opposite choice for this score. It is calculated by the fixed rules on this page, with no AI model involved, so the same resume always gets the same result and every lost point traces back to a rule you can read.
That also makes the score useful as a before-and-after measure: if it goes up, it is because your resume changed, not because the scoring did. Every report records the methodology version it was scored with, so results stay comparable over time.
How to fix the most common problems
- Contact info. Put your name, email address and phone number at the top of the page as plain text — not inside an image, a text box or a graphic.
- Standard sections. Use the plain headings Experience, Education and Skills. A creative heading like "Where I have made an impact" reads well to a person and is mis-filed by software.
- Parseability. Export a text-based PDF from your word processor instead of scanning or photographing a printout, and use a single-column layout. If you cannot select the text in your PDF, neither can an ATS.
- Dates. Give every role and qualification a date range in one consistent format, such as "Jan 2020 – Mar 2023". Avoid seasons, bare years mixed with full dates, and ranges with no end.
- Length & density. Aim for roughly 400 to 1,200 words and write your experience as bullet points. A few lines under each role reads as thin; an unbroken wall of text buries what matters.
- Formatting hygiene. Use standard bullet characters. Remove tables, multi-column sections, emoji and decorative symbols — tables and columns are the most common cause of scrambled text.
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