How we score your resume

What the score is — and isn't

The ATS Scanner Pro score is our own estimate of how well a resume's text matches one job description and how cleanly the file is likely to parse. It is not the score any employer's applicant tracking system would give you. Those systems are built by different vendors, configured by each employer, and their formulas aren't public. Many don't produce a score at all.

What the score is good for: comparing versions of your resume against the sameposting. What it isn't good for: comparing with scores from other tools, or predicting whether you'll get an interview.

The formula (100 points)

How keywords are found and weighted

We split the job description into its sections and decide how strongly each term is asked for:

• Required (weight 3): in a requirements or qualifications section, on a line with words like "must", "required" or "X+ years", or mentioned three or more times anywhere.
• Nice to have (weight 1.5): under "preferred", "bonus", "a plus" or similar.
• Mentioned (weight 1): in the duties or introduction.
• Benefits, salary and company boilerplate are ignored.

Terms come from a curated list of 289skills, tools, methods and certifications across engineering, data, product, design, marketing, sales, finance, HR, operations, healthcare and education. Each entry includes the common alternatives — "k8s" counts for Kubernetes, "RESTful" for REST APIs, "Search Engine Optimization" for SEO. Words that are also ordinary English (Go, R, Excel, Swift) only count when capitalised and not at the start of a sentence. We also pick up capitalised product names and repeated two-word phrases the list doesn't know.

Then, for each term:

• Found earns full credit — or 85% if it only appears in your skills list and never in a sentence or bullet.
• Similar wording (every word of a multi-word term is present in another form, such as "managed stakeholders" for "stakeholder management") earns half credit.
• Missing earns nothing.
• Soft skills such as "communication" count at half weight, because recruiters rarely search for them.

You can tap any term in the report to leave it out of the score — useful when the scanner picks up a word that isn't really a requirement.

Parsing checks

These come from the file itself, not from guesses:

• Critical: almost no extractable text (scanned or image-based file); broken characters from unembedded fonts.
• Warnings: more than 25% of lines sitting side by side with another block (columns, measured from PDF text positions); tables (DOCX); no email; no standard Experience heading; few or no dates; fewer than 180 words; a key term repeated more than eight times.
• Minor: images; no phone; no Education or Skills heading; paragraphs instead of bullets; page numbers; icons used as labels; a generic file name; very long resumes.

Each finding in the report is marked as measured or likely, so you know how much weight to give it.

Score bands

• 80–100, strong: most required terms covered, clean file.
• 65–79, good: a few important gaps.
• 50–64, fair: several required terms missing or a formatting problem.
• Below 50, weak: not yet tailored, or a stretch role.

Where this runs

All of the above runs in your browser. Your resume and the job description aren't sent to us or to an AI model. The code that does it is the same for everyone; there is no hidden premium scoring. Read more in the privacy policy.

Known limits

• Unusual layouts can still extract in an odd order that we don't detect.
• Content in Word headers, footers and text boxes isn't read — which is also true of many ATS parsers.
• We match words, not meaning. If you describe a skill in completely different language, we'll mark it missing; so will a keyword search.
• We don't judge whether your experience is good — only whether it's visible.

Found a case where the scanner gets it wrong? Tell us — real examples are how the keyword list and checks improve.