ATS Explained

What is an ATS — and why does your CV need to pass it?

Most job applications are screened by software before a human ever reads them. Here's what that means for you, and how SBOY helps you beat the bots.

What is ATS?

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is software that companies use to collect, sort, and rank job applications. When you submit your CV online, it almost certainly passes through one first.

The ATS scans your CV for keywords from the job listing, checks the formatting for machine-readability, and assigns a relevance score. CVs that score below the threshold are filtered out — before any human sees them. Studies estimate that 75% of CVs are rejected by ATS before reaching a recruiter.

Why your CV needs to pass it

Even a brilliantly written CV can be invisible to a recruiter if it fails the ATS filter. The three most common failure modes are:

  • ✗Missing keywords — you describe a skill differently from the job listing (e.g., "JavaScript" vs. "JS").
  • ✗Complex formatting — tables, text boxes, and graphics confuse the parser; your content disappears.
  • ✗Non-standard section names — "Career Highlights" won't be parsed as "Work Experience" by many systems.

How SBOY scores your CV

SBOY's ATS Score is calculated by Claude AI across four dimensions:

Keyword match
How many of the job listing's key terms appear in your CV.
Formatting clarity
Whether the structure follows ATS-parseable conventions.
Section completeness
Presence of expected sections: summary, experience, education, skills.
Language strength
Use of active verbs and quantified achievements.

The score updates live as you edit. In Optimize mode (when you paste a job listing), the score also reflects keyword overlap with that specific listing — giving you a targeted match percentage you can improve in real time.

Ready to get your CV past the bots?

Build or upload your CV in SBOY and see your ATS score instantly — no guesswork.

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