How CVory’s ATS score works

What are the nine ATS checks?

These are the exact thresholds the scorer applies. The two marked English-only are skipped — not failed — on a resume in another language.

1. 1

   Contact info complete

   We confirm your name, a valid email address, and a phone number are all present. Applicant tracking systems index these fields first; a resume missing a parseable phone or email can be dropped before a human ever sees it.

2. 2

   Has a professional summary

   We check for a summary of at least 20 words. A short, role-tailored summary front-loads the keywords an ATS scans for and gives a recruiter something to read first instead of a job title and a date.

3. 3

   At least one role with bullets

   Work-experience bullets carry the most ATS weight, so we verify you have at least one role with real bullet points rather than an empty or paragraph-only history.

4. 4

   Strong action verbs on bullets

   We measure how many bullets start with a strong action verb (Led, Built, Reduced, Increased, Delivered…). Passing requires at least half of your bullets — across experience and projects together — to open with one. Verb-led bullets read as achievements, not duties. This check reads English verbs, so it only runs on resumes written in English.

5. 5

   Quantified achievements

   We scan bullets for numbers — percentages, currency amounts, multipliers, counts, time saved. Passing requires at least 30% of your bullets to be quantified. “Grew revenue 34%” beats “grew revenue” for both the parser and the hiring manager.

6. 6

   No weak phrasing

   We flag five filler phrases: “responsible for,” “duties included,” “worked on,” “helped with,” and “in charge of.” These describe duties instead of outcomes and dilute the keywords that matter. Like the action-verb check, it reads English wording, so it only runs on resumes written in English.

7. 7

   Skills section present

   We confirm you have a populated skills section. ATS keyword matching leans heavily on this block, and recruiters often filter candidates by specific skills, so a clearly labelled list is essential.

8. 8

   Education listed

   We check for at least one education entry with a school or a degree — an empty placeholder entry doesn't count. Most applicant tracking systems expect one, even a brief one, and some screens filter on degree or field.

9. 9

   ATS-safe single-column layout

   We verify your chosen template is single-column. Multi-column “designer” layouts can be read out of order by older parsers, jumbling your content. Picking a designer template fails this check and lowers your score — by design, so the trade-off is never hidden.

What is each check worth?

Exactly the same as every other check. There is no weighting behind the scenes and no check that secretly counts double, so the quickest way to lift a low score is to fix whichever check is currently failing rather than to guess which one carries the most weight. The result is rounded to the nearest whole number, which is why a resume passing eight of nine shows 89 and not 88.9. What the number is not is a prediction: it measures whether your resume is structurally readable and complete, not whether you are the right person for the job, and no employer’s own system is obliged to agree with ours. We keep the formula visible instead of hiding it behind an opaque “AI score” precisely so you can tell those two things apart.

How does CVory compare your resume with a job description?

Beyond the structural score, CVory compares your resume against a specific job description. It pulls out the words and two-word phrases that recur in the posting, checks which ones appear in your resume’s content (whole words, with plurals and tenses folded together), and reports a match percentage plus the missing keywords. Because real applicant tracking systems rank candidates partly on keyword overlap with the job, closing genuine gaps — only with terms that truly apply to you — is one of the highest-leverage edits you can make before applying.

Frequently asked questions