What is an ATS score, and how is it calculated?

What the score measures

• Keyword match: how many of the job description's skills, tools and terms appear in the resume, with must-haves weighted more.
• Structure: whether the expected sections exist and can be found: summary, experience, education, skills, contact details.
• Readability: whether bullets start with action verbs, stay a sensible length, and include measurable results.
• Parseability: whether the text can be extracted cleanly: no columns, images or odd characters breaking the reading order.

How Resumeni's score is built

Keyword match is 55 points (must-have keywords count double), sections and contact details 15, readability 15, and parseability 15. Without a job description, the three structural parts are scaled to 100. The checker runs on rules, not AI, so the same resume gets the same score every time and you can see exactly which items moved it.

Is this the employer's real score?

No tool outside the employer can see their configuration. Employers use different systems (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Taleo, iCIMS and others) and set their own filters. An external ATS score is a proxy: it tells you whether the ingredients the real systems look for are present. A resume that scores well on keywords, structure and parseability will rank well in most of them.

What score to aim for

Against a specific job description, above 80 is strong, 60–80 means specific gaps to close, and under 60 usually means missing must-have keywords or a layout the parser can't read. Chasing 100 is not useful; it usually means stuffing keywords you can't back up.

How to raise the score honestly

1. Add missing keywords only where they describe experience you have.
2. Mirror the job title in your headline.
3. Rewrite the top bullets with action verbs and numbers.
4. Fix parse issues: single column, standard headings, text PDF.
5. Re-check, then apply.