Each applicant tracking system parses your resume into structured data before a human sees it, and each one fails differently. These guides document the systems by name: the parser, the employers, the format that survives the screen. Workday, Taleo, iCIMS and Greenhouse are live; Lever is next.
The ATS behind roughly 39% of the Fortune 500. A two-stage parser that strips your layout, so single column, contact in the body, and DOCX decide whether a recruiter ever reads you.
Workday Recruiting
Closed to new customers since February 2026 and still everywhere in government and healthcare. No AI reads your resume here: Required and Asset prescreening criteria decide your ranking, not keyword density.
Oracle Taleo
iCIMS tells candidates to upload the resume before completing any field, and almost nobody does. One feature, Candidate Ranking, actually evaluates you; the AI agents it announced in 2026 never screen your application.
iCIMS Talent Cloud
The one major ATS that publishes its own parse-failure list, and the one whose apply URL lies: six of seven Greenhouse boards redirect away and never name it. Auto-Reject is real, and it fires on your screening answers rather than your resume.
Greenhouse Software
It will follow the same structure as the four already live: how the parser reads your resume, the employers verified on it, and the format that passes. Until it ships, run your resume through the analyzer to see how any ATS reads it today.
The same shape repeats so a candidate who reads one guide knows where to look in the next.
Each ATS converts your file to text and maps it to fields in its own way. Workday strips headers and interleaves two-column layouts, Taleo detects headers but extracts only a fixed documented field list, and iCIMS asks you to upload before completing any field so the parse can populate the form. Every guide documents the parser behavior, the upload formats it tolerates, and the structure it can read.
We name an employer only when we can prove the ATS, and the proof differs by system. Workday sites live on a company.myworkdayjobs.com subdomain, Taleo on a company.taleo.net host, and iCIMS on a careers-company.icims.com host. Greenhouse is the exception: most of its boards redirect away and hide it, so the proof is its public board API. Every guide shows you how to confirm a given company in seconds, and documents the candidates we checked and rejected.
A do-this and avoid-this checklist tied to how the specific parser fails: the layout, headings, file format, dates, and keyword match. Then a scan against the real job description before you submit.
New to the vocabulary? The ATS glossary defines the 35 terms these guides use: knockout questions, requisitions, boolean search, match rate, and the rest.
Upload a resume and a job description to get an ATS score, the keyword gaps, and the formatting that breaks the parse. No signup to see the score.
Build on a single-column, parser-safe structure by design: standard fonts, no tables, a real text layer. The format every guide here asks for, enforced for you.
The real numbers behind the screen, from our own pipeline: median ATS score, how many keywords the average resume misses, and where the fake 75% stat came from.
Parse integrity is only the second of five passes. The full method for reviewing a resume against one specific job description, plus a weighted rubric and a printable checklist.
The analyzer reads your resume the way an ATS parser does, then shows the fields that come back empty, the keywords the posting wants, and a rewrite plan. Free to scan; no signup to see the score.
