Did you know that 80% of resumes never reach a human recruiter? If you’re applying to jobs and hearing nothing back, your resume may be failing the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) test before it even reaches a hiring manager.

In today’s competitive job market, understanding how Applicant Tracking Systems work is no longer optional—it’s essential. In my previous blog, we covered the basics of ATS algorithms, including how they screen resumes and why readability matters.

In this blog, we’ll break down how ATS software reads, evaluates, and ranks your resume—and, more importantly, how you can optimize your resume to improve your ATS resume score and increase your chances of landing an interview. Whether you’re looking for an ATS-friendly resume template for your industry— Customer Success, Sales, HR, Finance, Legal, Healthcare etc. or tips on incorporating industry-specific ATS keywords, this guide has you covered. By the end, you’ll have actionable strategies to ensure your resume gets past the ATS gatekeeper—and lands in front of human eyes.

How Applicant Tracking Systems Work

An ATS works like a search engine for recruiters, scanning resumes for relevance before ranking them. The process can be divided into two phases:

Phase 1: The Read Phase – Ensuring Your Resume Is ATS-Friendly

Before an ATS can analyze your qualifications, it must first extract (i.e. read) text from your resume. Given that 75% of applications are rejected by Applicant Tracking Systems because of readability issues, this phase is more important than you think. If the system can’t parse your content, it won’t matter how impressive your qualifications are. Here’s what impacts ATS resume readability:

File Type: Low Impact

A lot of job seekers ask, “Which format do most employers prefer for resumes?” While PDF is the most common format, employers don’t really have a preference.

Most ATS can read standard file types like .pdf, .docx, and .txt. None of these formats is better than the other, regardless of what a resume website might have convinced you to believe. Similarly, there isn’t much difference between a PDF generated by a resume website versus the one you generate on your PC—so long as the content is generated from a text file.

However, avoid submitting your resume as an image i.e. PNG or JPEG file—or even a PDF generated from an image file. These formats render your text invisible to the ATS, thereby making you unqualified for the job.

Graphics and Icons: High Impact

Although graphics and icons may be visually appealing to humans, it’s best to avoid them. ATS software cannot read text embedded in images. If you use a company logo instead of writing out the company name, an ATS will miss the company name and may even disregard that experience.

In the resume example shown above, the ATS would read the experience as follows:

As you can see, the ATS would completely miss the company (Nvidia) details.

Tables and Columns: High Impact

Don’t use them. Most ATS programs read from left to right, top to bottom—so if your resume is formatted in columns, the ATS may scramble the order of your content.

In the resume example shown above, the ATS would read the resume as follows:

As you can see, the information would seem completely garbled to an ATS. And since it can’t identify the company, position and dates from the experience, it would most likely ignore the information.

Font Choice: Low Impact

While many resume websites might suggest fonts like Arial or Times New Roman and font sizes between 10 and 12, these have no impact on ATS readability. Nonetheless, these are solid suggestions for any standard professional document, including a resume. But in this case, you can use your judgement to demonstrate your unique style without any fear of being misunderstood by an ATS.

Sections & Headers: High Impact

ATS software categorizes your content into Experience, Education, and Skills. So using sections with standard headers like Experience, Education, and Skills along with clear section separation will ensure that key information is not overlooked by an ATS.

Phase 2: The Evaluation Phase – Maximizing Your ATS Resume Score

Once the ATS has successfully read your resume, it scores it based on how well it matches the job description. This scoring mechanism creates hierarchical candidate listings that prioritize applications for human review.

Modern Applicant Tracking Systems use Natural Language Processing (NLP) which allows them to recognize semantic relationships between terms. But exact keyword matching remains the most critical component for most ATS. Let’s break down the key factors that influence your resume’s keyword score:

Keyword Importance

Not all keywords contribute equally to your ATS score. An ATS determines the importance of a keyword based on how frequently it appears in the job description. 

For example a job description has the following keywords:

• Product Management with a frequency of 3%
• Analytics with a frequency of 2%
• JIRA with a frequency of 1%

This means that the keyword ‘Product Management’ is 1.5x as important as the keyword ‘Analytics’ and 3x as important as the keyword ‘JIRA’.

Note: When identifying keywords, an ATS does not consider conjunctions like “because”, “and”,” since” etc. or prepositions like “under”, “above”,” in”, “at” etc. These are ignored as part of the Stop Words Removal step in the  NLP workflow. 

Relative Keyword Frequency

An ATS scores the resume for each keyword based on the frequency of the keyword in the resume relative to that in the job description.

For the above example, let’s assume that the frequencies of the aforementioned keywords in your resume are as follows:

• Product Management: 4%
• Analytics: 0%
• JIRA: 0.5%

The relative frequency for each keyword i.e. the keyword score would be as follows:

• Product Management: 100 (since this meets or exceeds the frequency in the job description)
• Analytics: 0 (since it’s not present in the resume)
• JIRA: 50 (since it is only 50% as frequent in your resume as the job description)

Keyword Context

In addition to the relative frequency of a keyword, the context in which it is used also impacts the ATS score. When a keyword is used in a sentence or a phrase with other keywords (for example as a bullet point in your Experience section), it gets a higher score than when it is used standalone (for example as a bullet point in your Skills section).

Using the aforementioned keywords for example, let’s say 2 candidates list the same set of keywords but in different contexts.

Candidate 1

Candidate 2

Candidate 1 will score higher than candidate 2 since they have used the keywords more contextually i.e. in proper sentences.

Overall ATS Score

The overall ATS score is a numerical value that equals the weighted average of the product of the keyword score and keyword context weight. For example, if there are 2 keywords, the score would be:

[ Importance (Keyword 1) x Score (Keyword 1) x Context Weight (Keyword 1) + Importance (Keyword 2) x Score (Keyword 2) x Context Weight (Keyword 2) ] / [ Importance (Keyword 1) + Importance (Keyword 2) ]

For the above examples, let’s assume that an ATS has a context weight of 0.5 for a standalone keyword and 1.0 for a keyword that is used in a sentence. The ATS scores for the 2 candidates would be as follows:

Candidate 1

Candidate 2

This example illustrates why an ATS would recommend candidate 1 over candidate 2 based on how each candidate has incorporated job specific keywords into their resume.

Takeaways: How to Improve Your ATS Resume Score

• Stick to ATS-friendly resume formats like .docx or PDF (not image-based).
• Avoid graphics, tables, and columns that can confuse the ATS. 
• Structure your resume with clear section headers. 
• Use industry-specific keywords from job descriptions. 
• Write full sentences that naturally incorporate keywords.

Final Thoughts: Automate ATS Optimization with Upplai

Optimizing your resume for ATS screening can feel overwhelming, but Upplai makes it easy. Our AI-powered platform:

• Analyzes your resume readability score and flags issues.
• Identifies the most important ATS keywords for your job title. 
• Offers instant ATS scoring feedback so you can refine your resume in real time.

Don’t let an ATS stand between you and your dream job. Try Upplai today and take control of your job search!