Paste your resume and a job description to see your keyword match score, which keywords you are missing, and exactly what to fix before you apply.
Ready to update your resume with these keywords?
Update My Resume in the Builder →Simple rules that dramatically improve your match score
Copy the exact terms from the job description. If it says "stakeholder management," do not write "managing stakeholders." ATS matches exact phrases, not synonyms.
Tables, text boxes, headers, and images can confuse ATS parsers. Use plain text with simple headings. Our Classic template is fully ATS-safe.
Write "Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)" to cover both the full term and the acronym. Different ATS systems are trained differently.
An applicant tracking system is the database an employer uses to receive, store and filter applications. When you upload a resume, the ATS parses it into structured fields: name, contact details, employment history with dates, education, and a bag of keywords. Recruiters then search and filter that structured data rather than reading every file. The practical consequence is that a resume which reads beautifully to a human can still score badly if the parser could not extract its content cleanly.
Parsing is where most applications fail rather than at any scoring stage. Text inside images, headers, footers, text boxes or multi column layouts is frequently dropped or scrambled. Dates in inconsistent formats break the employment history field. Creative section labels such as Where I Have Worked can prevent the parser from recognising an experience block at all. SHRM reporting on applicant tracking systems has tracked how these systems have developed and what they now do with the data they extract.
The checker runs two passes. The first is a format audit: it looks for the structural choices that break parsing, including multi column layouts, content locked inside tables or images, unusual section headings, missing contact details and non standard date formats. The second is a keyword comparison against the job description you paste in, reporting which required terms appear in your resume, which are missing, and where a term appears only as an acronym or only spelled out.
Everything runs in your browser, so neither your resume nor the job description is uploaded. The output is a list of specific fixes rather than a single score, because a score tells you nothing actionable. A missing keyword and a broken date format are both flagged, but they need different remedies.
Single column layout, standard section headings such as Experience, Education and Skills, dates written consistently in one format, and contact details in the body rather than a header. Save as a text based PDF rather than a scan or an image. Spell out an acronym and give the abbreviation once, so Search Engine Optimisation and SEO both register. Mirror the wording of the job description where it is genuinely accurate, since the parser matches strings rather than meaning.
The common mistakes are the mirror image of that list: two column templates, skills shown as graphic bars with no text, a photo where the name should be, job titles invented internally that no recruiter would search for, and keyword stuffing that a human reader will notice immediately. Longer hiring processes mean more applications pass through more filters before anyone reads them, a trend SHRM research on hiring timelines has documented, which raises the cost of a parsing failure.
It is the database an employer uses to receive and filter applications. It parses your resume into structured fields such as contact details, employment history and skills, then lets recruiters search and filter that data rather than reading every file individually.
Usually a parsing problem rather than a content problem. Multi column layouts, text inside images or text boxes, contact details in the document header, inconsistent date formats and unconventional section headings all cause the parser to drop or scramble content.
No. Both the resume text and the job description are processed in your browser, and nothing is sent to a server. That also means clearing the page discards the analysis rather than saving it.
Only the ones that genuinely describe your experience. Mirror the exact wording where it is accurate, and include both the spelled out term and its acronym once each. Padding a resume with terms you cannot evidence fails at the interview stage instead.
A text based PDF exported from a word processor. Avoid scanned PDFs and image exports, because the text cannot be extracted. If an employer specifically requests a Word document, send that rather than overriding the instruction.