Most resume tools tell you what you want to hear. This one is built to be checkable: every rule is published, the score never moves unless your resume does, and the things it cannot know are written down rather than glossed over.
- Is the free ATS check really free, with no account?
- Yes. One resume, one full 28-rule report, no signup, no email and no card. There is no payment anywhere in the product. A free account unlocks saving your reports, tailoring a resume to a job description, and the practice sets.
- Do you store my resume file?
- No. The file is parsed in memory, the text is analysed, and the binary is discarded. There is no column in the database that could hold your file. The extracted text is what the checks read.
- What do the 28 checks actually look at?
- Three things: whether a machine can parse your file at all, what your content says, and how it is formatted. Content carries about half the weight, parseability about a third, and format the rest. Parsing is checked first because a resume a parser mangles never reaches a human, however strong the content is.
- Is this the score a real company's ATS would give me?
- No, and nobody can honestly claim that. This is OptiResume's own readiness score, computed from published research and recruiter surveys. There is no integration with Workday, Taleo or any other vendor, and a tool that claims to reproduce a specific employer's score is guessing.
- Does an ATS automatically reject most resumes?
- No. That claim is widespread and has no credible source, and we refuse to repeat it. The real risks are more boring and more fixable: a file that parses badly, and missing the words the job description actually uses. Our evidence page names the myths we will not score.
- Does AI decide my score?
- No. The score is computed by deterministic rules in plain code, with no model in the path, so the same resume scores the same every time. AI is used only where you ask for it, such as rewriting a weak bullet, and it is instructed never to invent experience you do not have.
- What files can I upload?
- PDF and DOCX, up to 5 MB. If your PDF uses a font that strict parsers misread, the report says so, and shows you the exact text a machine extracts from your file so you can see what a recruiter's software sees.
- What if a rule does not apply to me?
- It is not counted against you. A fresher with no work experience is not marked down for having no work experience; the rule abstains and its weight moves to the checks that do apply.
- Can I check my resume against a specific job description?
- Yes, paste it into the optional box. You get the keywords the job asks for that your resume is missing, matched semantically rather than by exact string, so a related term still counts.
The research behind every rule, and the four popular claims we refuse to score, are on the evidence page.