ATS resume checks

Every scan runs 11 checks on your resume, and only 3 of them change your match score. The other 8 are advice on how your resume reads to a recruiter, worth acting on, but they cannot move the number.

You will find all 11 under Resume Checks on your scan's report page.

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The 3 checks that count

These three are the match score between them, and nothing else in the report reaches it.

• Skills, split into hard skills (60 points), soft skills (15), and other keywords (5).
• Job Title Match, 10 points, all or nothing.
• Degree Match, 10 points, or 5 if you have a lower degree than the posting asks for.

See How your match score is calculated for the full arithmetic.

The 8 advisory checks

These tell you how your resume reads to a recruiter and how cleanly an applicant tracking system will handle it. None of them changes your score.

Word Count counts the words in your resume against a recommended range of 500 to 700 words, and a resume inside that range gets a green tick.

Under 500 words is marked in red, and the usual cause is not a short resume but a section that did not read in. Check your work history is all there before you start writing more.

Over 700 words is an amber warning rather than a failure, because a longer resume is fine if you have over a decade of professional experience or you are applying for a federal position. If neither applies to you, it is worth trimming.

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Email Address confirms your resume has an email address on it. Applicant tracking systems pull contact details straight out of the document into a candidate record, so a missing address costs you the reply, not only the tick.

Phone Number does the same for your phone number, for the same reason.

Accomplishments counts the quantifiable accomplishments it can find and quotes them back to you. If it finds none, it shows worked examples of what one looks like, along the lines of "Achieved a 30% increase in website traffic through the implementation of a comprehensive SEO strategy and targeted digital advertising campaigns."

Buzz Words flags clichés and filler from a list of 236 phrases, the "boil the ocean", "guru", "cutting edge" family. They take up space a specific claim could have used.

Verb Choice flags weak verbs that describe presence rather than impact: handled, helped, did, worked, assisted, took care of. Swapping one of these for a verb that names the result is usually the fastest single improvement you can make to a bullet.

First-person Language Check flags first-person words on your resume: i, me, my, mine, we, and its. Resume convention is to drop the subject entirely, since the reader already knows the document is about you.

Date Formatting works out your total years of experience from the dates in your work history. If it cannot, that is the signal your dates are inconsistent, and the check says what to do: "Try standard date formats (February 2010 - June 2014) and ensure all dates are in the same format." Inconsistent dates are one of the most common things an applicant tracking system gets wrong about a resume.

Which checks are Premium

Four of the advisory checks are Premium: Buzz Words, Verb Choice, First-person Language Check, and Date Formatting. On a free account these appear blurred with a PREMIUM FEATURE button in place of the result.

All four are advisory, which means being on the free plan never changes a match score. A free account and a Premium account scanning the same resume against the same job get the same number, so what Premium buys you here is the writing feedback rather than a better result.

The other four advisory checks, Word Count, Email Address, Phone Number, and Accomplishments, run on every plan.

More on ATS checks

If you want the overview of what an applicant tracking system does to your resume before it reaches a person, the ATS resume checker page covers it.