Is your CV ATS-friendly? What JobPLT's CV score checks and how to raise yours
JobPLT scores every CV from 0 to 100 across six areas: impact, structure, skills, clarity, ATS readability and contact details. Here's what each check looks for and practical ways to improve your score.
Recruiters often spend less than a minute on a first look at a CV, and many companies run applications through an applicant tracking system (ATS) before a person ever sees them. A CV that's hard to scan, missing key sections or vague about results can lose out to weaker candidates who present themselves better.
That's why JobPLT gives every uploaded CV a CV score from 0 to 100, with suggestions that point to specific lines in your CV. Here's what it checks and how to improve each area.
The six areas
| Area | Weight | What it checks |
|---|---|---|
| Impact & achievements | 25% | Measurable results and strong action verbs |
| Structure & sections | 20% | Standard headings, a summary, typos in headings |
| Skills & keywords | 20% | Breadth of technical skills, and whether they appear in your experience |
| Clarity & length | 15% | Length for your experience level, long bullets, pronouns, clichés |
| ATS readability | 10% | Clean, extractable text and consistent dates |
| Contact details | 10% | Email, phone, LinkedIn and a portfolio or GitHub link |
1. Impact & achievements
This is the biggest part of the score because it's the biggest difference between an average CV and a strong one. JobPLT looks at each achievement statement in your experience section and checks two things:
- Does it include a measurable result? Team size, number of users or customers, accuracy, time or money saved, revenue.
- Does it start with an action verb? "Led", "Built", "Designed" and "Reduced" describe what you did; "Responsible for" and "Worked on" describe duties.
Before: "Responsible for building a chatbot for customer queries." After: "Built a customer-support chatbot handling 3,000 queries a month, cutting average response time by 60%."
The CV report quotes your statements that lack numbers and suggests what kind of number to add, depending on whether the line is about leading a team, building a model or serving customers.
2. Structure & sections
Recruiters and ATS software look for familiar headings: Experience, Education and Skills at minimum, ideally with a short professional summary at the top. JobPLT checks that these exist and also catches typos in headings, which stand out immediately. ("Core Experties" instead of "Core Expertise" is a real example it has flagged.)
Keep your summary to two or three lines, about 40–90 words: who you are, your years of experience and what you're best at.
3. Skills & keywords
Matching and ATS filtering both depend on keywords, so list the tools and technologies you actually use. JobPLT also checks whether the skills in your skills section appear anywhere in your experience. A skill that's only listed carries less weight than one you can show in action: "Deployed models with Docker and FastAPI" is more convincing than "Docker" in a list.
4. Clarity & length
- Length: around 300–650 words for early-career CVs, 450–950 for mid-level and 600–1,300 for senior profiles.
- One idea per bullet: statements over about 38 words are hard to scan.
- No first-person pronouns: write "Led a team…" rather than "I led a team…".
- Evidence over clichés: "hard-working", "team player" and "results-driven" are claims; your achievements should show them.
5. ATS readability
ATS software reads the text of your CV, not the design. JobPLT checks that your CV produces clean, extractable text and that dates use one consistent format (for example 06/2025 – Present). If your CV is a scanned image, nothing can be read at all, so always upload a text-based PDF or Word file.
6. Contact details
Make it easy to reach you: an email address and phone number at the top, plus your LinkedIn profile URL. Most recruiters check LinkedIn before calling. If you work in tech or data, a GitHub, Kaggle or portfolio link lets reviewers see your work.
Bonus: what your best matches ask for
Once you've run a search, the CV report adds a market insight: skills that your well-matching jobs mention but your CV doesn't, with how many jobs asked for each. Only add skills you genuinely have, but if you do, this is a quick way to make sure they're visible.
How to use the report
- Fix the "Fix first" items: they make the biggest difference.
- Rework three or four achievement statements with numbers.
- Upload the improved version. JobPLT re-scores it instantly and shows how many points you gained compared with the previous version.
What's next: an AI review
Today's score uses transparent rules, so every point can be explained. Next, we're working on an AI-powered review that can rewrite weak bullet points in your voice, tailor your CV to a specific job from your results and summarise how a recruiter would read it.
Upload your CV to see your score, or learn how the job match score works.