How this ATS score is calculated
Most resume checkers return a number and keep the method private, which leaves you guessing at what to change. MOR's score is a fixed arithmetic sum over six signals, so the same resume scores identically every time and you can check the reasoning yourself. Here is the whole thing.
| Signal | Points | What it checks |
|---|
| Section structure | 25 | Summary, Experience, Education and Skills present and named the way parsers expect. A renamed or missing section is the single most common reason a resume scores badly. |
| Action verbs | 20 | Bullets that open with a concrete verb — built, led, reduced, shipped — rather than “responsible for” or “worked on”. |
| Quantified impact | 20 | Bullets containing a number, percentage, currency amount or scale. “Cut p95 latency 40%” scores; “improved performance” does not. |
| Formatting | 15 | No tables, text boxes, multi-column layouts or images. These survive a human read and break a parser. |
| Contact info | 10 | Email and phone parseable near the top of the document, so the ATS can build a candidate record at all. |
| Word count | 10 | Inside the band for your detected experience level — the thresholds move for junior, mid, senior and executive resumes. |
What happens when you add a job description
The job description does not replace the structural score — it adjusts it. MOR classifies each requirement in the posting by weight rather than counting how often a word appears: primary requirements count four times, technical skills twice, process skills one and a half times, soft skills half, and filler language not at all. That weighted match percentage then moves your base score:
final = base + (match% − 50) × 0.30
A 50% match is neutral. A strong match adds at most 15 points, and a resume irrelevant to the posting loses at most 15. The structural score stays the dominant term on purpose: a keyword-stuffed resume with no quantified results is still a weak resume, and a score that hid that would not be worth reading.
Questions people actually ask
- Is this ATS checker really free, with no signup?
- Yes. Upload a PDF at the top of this page and you get the full score and breakdown without an account, an email address, or a card. There is no scan limit on the checker. An account is only needed if you want MOR to rewrite and tailor the resume for you.
- How is the ATS score calculated?
- It is a deterministic 100-point sum over six signals: section structure (25), action verbs (20), quantified impact (20), formatting (15), contact info (10) and word count (10). No language model is involved in the number, so the same resume always scores the same. If you paste a job description, the JD match adjusts that base score additively using final = base + (match% − 50) × 0.30, which caps the JD's influence at plus or minus 15 points.
- What is a good ATS score?
- 80 and above is competitive. 60 to 79 usually means the structure is sound but bullets lack numbers. Below 60 almost always points at a missing or unconventionally named section, or contact details the parser cannot find — not at missing keywords, which is what most people assume.
- Does a high ATS score guarantee an interview?
- No, and any tool claiming otherwise is overselling. The score measures whether your resume is machine-readable and relevant to a specific posting. It cannot model a particular employer's ATS configuration, their shortlist size, or a recruiter's judgement. It removes a failure mode; it does not create an outcome.
- Does MOR see my real employer's ATS?
- No. No public checker does. MOR models how mainstream parsers behave; it does not connect to Workday, Greenhouse, Taleo or any employer's instance. That is why the score is presented as a structural audit rather than a prediction.
- Will keyword stuffing raise my score?
- Barely, and it will lower the resume's quality. Keywords reach the score only through the JD match term, which is capped at plus or minus 15 points, and JD requirements are weighted by importance — a primary requirement counts four times a soft skill, and filler words count zero. Repeating a word ten times in your resume does not multiply its value.
