Jordan Avery Chen: cleared 3 of 6 screeners.
Your scores range 66 to 97, a 31-point spread. Collapse that into one average (86) and the Workday High parse risk disappears.
ALEX parser, 1:30 timeout; a heavy PDF returns an empty profile.
Textkernel deep-learning, 300k+ synonyms; the most tolerant of the six.
Full-body keyword index; word-stems but won't expand abbreviations.
Rule-based dictionary, exact-string only; one missing keyword drops you a tier.
Textkernel parse + exact-match base search; knockouts auto-archive.
Skills Cloud NLP; the Summary field is not searchable.
Pass, At-risk and Fail are FirstRound's modeled estimates of parse risk, not determinations by the named ATS or any employer. We model how each system reads a résumé rather than feeding yours into the live software, so treat these as informed predictions, not a promised interview.
A curated checklist for the data analyst role family, not from your job posting. Paste the job description on your next scan for a real keyword-by-keyword match.
What's costing you points
Pipe separator ( | ) in contact header causes tokenization errors in Workday
Fix: Separate contact items with a comma or a single space, not a pipe (avoid the • bullet too; it fails older Taleo-class parsers)
Pipe separator ( | ) in contact header: Greenhouse mangles contact field extraction
Fix: Separate contact items with a comma or a single space, not a pipe (avoid the • bullet too; it fails older Taleo-class parsers)
Double-dash "--" in date ranges: Taleo date parser fails entirely on this separator
Fix: Replace all -- with a single hyphen
Double-dash date separator "--": Workday does not recognize this as a date range
Fix: Replace all -- with a single hyphen: Jan 2020 - Present
Phone "+1 (XXX)" format: Taleo fails to extract this as a valid phone number
Fix: Use plain XXX-XXX-XXXX format with no +1 prefix
Phone format "+1 (XXX)" not recognized by Workday
Fix: Remove +1 prefix. Use plain format: XXX-XXX-XXXX
Section header "Summary": Greenhouse expects "Professional Summary" as the canonical field name
Fix: Rename to Professional Summary
Section header "Experience": Greenhouse expects "Work Experience"
Fix: Rename to Work Experience
Section header "Summary": Workday maps this inconsistently; "Professional Summary" is the recognized field
Fix: Rename to Professional Summary
Section "Summary": SmartRecruiters may not map this to the correct field
Fix: Rename to "Professional Summary"
Hyphenated skill names (e.g. Machine-Learning): Workday tokenizes as one unrecognized compound, not two keywords
Fix: Remove hyphens: Machine Learning, not Machine-Learning
Hyphenated skill names (e.g. Full-Stack): Lever splits on hyphens, misses the compound keyword
Fix: Use spaces instead of hyphens in skill names: Full Stack, not Full-Stack
Pipe separator ( | ) in contact header: minor parsing degradation in Lever
Fix: Separate contact items with a comma or a single space, not a pipe (avoid the • bullet too; it fails older Taleo-class parsers)
Long free-form summary paragraph: Workday often ignores this field entirely (Summary is not searchable)
Fix: Keep to 2–3 tight sentences, and move key terms into Skills + Experience
A URL in your contact block ends with a trailing slash: Lever's URL extractor fails on trailing-slash URLs without a path
Fix: Remove trailing slash: github.com/username not github.com/username/
Non-standard section name "summary": iCIMS may not correctly map this to the expected field
Fix: Rename to "Professional Summary"
Formatting is rarely the real auto-reject. Knockout questions are.
Every screener above filters on how your résumé parses. But the single most common way an application is auto-rejected is a knockout question on the form itself, like “Do you have 5+ years of X?” or “Are you authorized to work without sponsorship?” A “no” archives you before a human ever reads the résumé you just cleaned up. We cannot see those questions, so we will not pretend a good parse score means you are through. Answer every required question truthfully and completely, and make sure your résumé backs up each “yes.” Why formatting is oversold
Set an ATS-clean résumé.
Every fix above, applied as formatting normalization: separators, dates, phone, section names, skill structure. We never rewrite your bullets, employers, titles or achievements.
Scores are estimates modeled on documented ATS behavior. We don't run your résumé through the live systems, and nothing here guarantees an interview or a job. The six screeners modeled here are commercial hiring platforms: federal hiring (USAJobs) and most academic hiring run on different systems we don't model, so treat these scores as out of scope for those pipelines. FirstRound isn't affiliated with the named platforms. Disclaimer, Terms, and Privacy.