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What our checker tests — and what it cannot

A score you cannot inspect is marketing. This page documents exactly what the Pass ATS Resume readiness score measures, how the points are assigned, and where its knowledge ends.

The rubric

• Parse safety. Our own templates are single-column, real-text, standard-heading layouts — the structure parsers handle most reliably. Pasted resumes are checked for the same properties.
• Contact completeness. Name, email, phone, and location present as plain text (not locked in an image or a header graphic).
• Standard structure. A professional summary, dated roles, and a dedicated skills section — the sections parsers classify first.
• Writing signals. The share of bullets carrying a real number, and the share opening with a strong action verb.
• Length sanity. Word count in the range a one-to-two-page resume normally occupies.
• Job-description coverage (only when you paste one). The share of the posting’s key terms — words and two-word phrases, minus stopwords — that appear in your resume. Reported alongside the full matched and missing lists.

What the extracted-text view is

It is the plain text our parser produces from your resume, in reading order. Employer systems differ, so identical output everywhere cannot be promised — but text that comes out scrambled or missing here is a reliable warning sign anywhere.

What no online checker can determine

• Whether you meet an employer’s hard requirements (licenses, authorization, availability).
• How a specific employer configured screening, ranking, or knockout questions.
• Why any individual application was rejected.
• Whether a higher score earns an interview. It does not, and we will never claim it does.

Update history

November 2026 — launch rubric (v1), as described above. Scoring changes will be dated and noted here; a score is always labeled with the rubric that produced it in our own communications.

Questions about the method: see the contact page.