ATS Basics
This is the software used by over 95% of Fortune 500 companies to scan and rank resumes before a human sees them.
What is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)?
These are the specific words and phrases that appear repeatedly in a job posting — they signal what the employer values most.
What are keywords?
This layout style — with one column of content flowing top to bottom — is the most ATS-compatible resume format.
What is a single-column layout?
These two widely available AI platforms are recommended in SOSC225 to help students refine and improve their professional application materials.
What are ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot?
This common resume mistake — putting all your contact information only in the document header — means ATS may never capture your phone number or email.
What is placing contact info in the header only?
ATS software ranks resumes primarily based on this — matching words and phrases from the resume to the job description.
What is keyword matching?
This category of keywords includes measurable, teachable abilities like Excel, Salesforce, QuickBooks, and Python.
What are hard skills?
This resume section heading is ATS-safe and clearly recognized — unlike creative labels like "My Story" or "What I've Done."
What is "Work Experience" (or Professional Experience, Education, Skills, Professional Summary)?
The most responsible first step BEFORE using AI to improve your resume is to do this.
What is writing your own draft first (or starting with your own ideas and experiences)?
This type of resume element — a bar chart or star rating showing skill proficiency — looks professional to a human but registers as a blank image to ATS.
What is a visual skill rating (or skill bar chart, star rating)?
This is the simple test you can perform by pasting your resume into this basic text application to check ATS compatibility.
What is pasting into Notepad (the plain text test)?
ATS best practice recommends including BOTH the abbreviation AND the spelled-out version of this type of term — for example: CRM and Customer Relationship Management.
What are acronyms (or industry acronyms and abbreviations)?
Placing your contact information in this document region is an ATS pitfall — many systems cannot scan it.
What is the document header (or footer)?
This AI capability lets you paste both your resume and a job description — and the AI identifies qualifications, skills, or keywords you are currently missing.
What is AI gap analysis (or keyword comparison)?
Sending the SAME unedited resume and cover letter to every job application without keyword customization is known as this approach — and it significantly reduces ATS match scores.
What is a generic (or one-size-fits-all) application strategy?
When your resume is rejected by ATS before a human reviews it, job seekers are often unaware of this reason — it is NOT your qualifications.
What is ATS incompatibility (formatting errors or missing keywords)?
According to course content, this section of your resume is one of the top locations to integrate primary ATS keywords naturally.
What is the Professional Summary (or Profile/Summary section)?
These two visual resume elements — while visually impressive — are completely invisible to ATS software because the system cannot interpret images.
What are headshots/photos and visual skill charts (or star ratings and bar graphs)?
When reviewing AI-generated cover letter language, you should ask yourself these three questions before including it in your final document.
What is: Is this true? Does this sound like me? Does it match my real experience?
This AI misuse — asking the AI to generate an entire resume from scratch without any real input from the candidate — leads to this critical problem in interviews.
What is inauthenticity (or the inability to speak to AI-generated content in an interview)?
Jobscan (2023) recommends running your resume through this type of platform before submitting — it compares your resume against the job posting and shows a match score.
What is a resume optimization tool (Jobscan, Resume Worded, or TealHQ)?
A savvy job seeker analyzes at least this many job postings for the same role to identify the highest-priority recurring keywords before applying.
What is three to five job postings (or multiple postings)?
This file format is the safest to use when submitting your resume — ATS can read it reliably regardless of design elements or fonts used.
What is .docx (Microsoft Word format)?
This is the three-step principle for responsible AI use in professional documents: start with your own draft, use AI to refine, and always do this before submitting.
What is reviewing, editing, and personalizing the AI output (or ensuring accuracy and authentic voice)?
A candidate who uses tables and text boxes in their resume risks this outcome — their bullet points and key qualifications may be read in this disorganized way by ATS.
What is out of order (or merged, scrambled, or entirely skipped by ATS parsing)?