The field guides

How each screener actually reads your résumé.

Our scoring engine is built on documented parser behavior. Each playbook pulls vendor docs and recruiter accounts into the handful of rules that actually change how a given platform reads you.

Independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by the named vendors. This reflects publicly documented behavior and may not match any specific employer's configuration. Trademarks belong to their owners.

Start here
Does an ATS actually reject your résumé?

The "75% of résumés are auto-rejected" number is not what it looks like. Here is what the record actually shows about who gets filtered, and by what.

Read the myth-buster →

Looking for advice for a specific job? See the ATS resume guides by role for nurses, accountants, teachers, tradespeople, and more.

Master rules, safe on all six

Do these and you clear the floor everywhere.

Single-column layout
Multi-column fails on every system
No tables for layout
Tables break field associations everywhere
Contact info in the body, not header/footer
Header/footer is skipped on every system
Standard section headers
Required for rule-based systems; beneficial for all
"Present" for ongoing roles
The only universally recognized term
Month + Year dates (Jan 2024)
Other formats fail on at least one platform
Single hyphen for date ranges
Safest separator across all systems
One phone, XXX-XXX-XXXX
Multiple phones cause wrong capture
Straight quotes, not curly
Curly quotes cause encoding errors
Dedicated, labeled Skills section
Required for keyword indexing on Workday/Greenhouse
Comma-separated skills, not a blob
A blob is read as a single token on Workday
No hyphenated skill names
Workday and Lever both break on these
No image-based PDFs
Fails on every system
Max 2 pages (3 for senior)
Workday truncates; all systems weight recent work