What an ATS resume score measures, and how to raise yours

1What is an ATS resume score?

There is no official ATS score. Applicant tracking systems such as Workday, Greenhouse, Lever and Zoho Recruit store your resume as a record and let recruiters search and filter those records; none of them publishes a universal number. A resume score is a checker's estimate of how well that record will come out — whether the text can be extracted, whether it contains the terms a recruiter will search for, and whether a person skimming it for ten seconds finds evidence rather than duties.

That means two checkers will give the same resume different numbers. What matters is whether a tool tells you what it measured and why you lost points, so you can decide whether you agree.

2What does the OpenRoles score measure?

Six criteria, weighted by how much they matter to the first read. A language model judges each criterion from 0 to 100; it is never shown the weights, so it cannot inflate the total by favouring the one that counts most. The weighting is done in code.

• Quantified impact (24%): How many bullets carry a measurable outcome — a number, a percentage, a scale, a time saved — rather than a description of duties.
• Keyword coverage (22%): How well the resume's vocabulary matches the roles this person is plainly targeting: named technologies, methods and domain terms an applicant tracking system would index.
• Parseable structure (20%): Whether an applicant tracking system can read the document at all: single-column flow, real headings, no tables or text boxes or sidebars, dates in a consistent recognisable form.
• Verb strength (14%): Whether bullets open with a strong specific action verb, rather than 'Responsible for', 'Worked on', 'Helped with' or a noun phrase.
• Length and density (10%): Whether the length suits the person's experience and the page is neither padded nor starved: bullet counts per role, words per bullet, whitespace.
• Contact and links (10%): Whether name, email, phone, city and the relevant professional links are present, correct in form, and machine-readable.

3How do you improve quantified impact?

Give each bullet a result someone could check: how many, how much, how fast, compared with what. If you do not have an exact figure, a defensible approximate one ("about 40 accounts") is better than none — but only one you could explain in an interview.

4How do you improve keyword coverage?

Name the tools, methods and domain terms you actually used, in the form job postings spell them — "PostgreSQL" rather than "databases", "Google Ads" rather than "online marketing". A skills line helps, but a term carries more weight inside a bullet that shows you using it.

5How do you improve parseable structure?

Use one column, the standard section headings, and plain text throughout. Take out tables, text boxes, sidebars and icons standing in for words, and write every date the same way.

6How do you improve verb strength?

Start every bullet with the specific thing you did — built, cut, negotiated, launched, migrated — and delete "Responsible for", "Worked on" and "Helped with". If the honest verb is "helped", say what your part was instead.

7How do you improve length and density?

One page for most people with under about ten years of experience. Three to five bullets for a recent role, fewer for older ones, and each bullet one or two lines. Cut duties anybody in the role would have had.

8How do you improve contact and links?

Put your name, email, phone number and city in the body of the page, not in a header or an image, and add the professional links that matter for the role — LinkedIn, GitHub, a portfolio. Check that each one opens.

9What is a good resume score?

On the OpenRoles scale, 85 or above is strong, 70 to 84 is solid, 50 to 69 is middle of the pack, and below 50 means the basics are costing you interviews. Most resumes can move a band in one sitting by fixing the lowest criterion first, because the weights reward the biggest gap more than polishing the strongest part.

A high score is not a shortlist. It means the resume will be read correctly and reads as evidence; whether it fits the job is a separate question, which is what tailoring is for.

10Common questions