ATS Resume Checker
This compares the vocabulary of a job posting against your resume and shows what appears in one and not the other. It runs entirely in your browser — nothing you paste is uploaded, stored or transmitted, which matters because a resume is frequently an unpublished document naming a current employer.
What it produces is a starting point for judgement rather than a score to maximise. Some gaps are genuine experience you lack; others are the same work described in different words, which is a much easier problem to fix.
Compare your resume against a posting
Paste the full job description on one side and your resume on the other. Everything stays in this browser tab.
Reading the result
Every missing term falls into one of three categories, and sorting them is the whole exercise.
A vocabulary gap is the same work under a different name — you wrote "customer support" and the posting says "client success". Change your word to theirs; nothing about your experience needs to change.
A real gap is a tool, certification or domain you genuinely have not worked with. Leave it out, and decide separately whether the overall match is still worth applying on.
Noise is the third category and it is large. Postings contain terms like "team player", "fast-paced" and the company name, none of which belongs in a resume. Ignore them.
What a match rate does and does not mean
A high overlap means your resume speaks the same language as the posting, which helps a recruiter search and helps a human reader recognise the fit quickly. It does not mean an applicant tracking system will score you highly, because most do not work that way.
A low overlap on a role you are clearly qualified for usually means a vocabulary mismatch rather than a qualification problem — which is good news, since it is fixable in fifteen minutes.
A low overlap on a role you are not qualified for is the tool working correctly. That result is worth taking seriously rather than optimising around.
What to change after running it
- Rewrite the summary using the posting's vocabulary for what you actually do.
- Move the bullet containing the most-matched term to the top of its role.
- Add the exact job title, if it honestly describes you.
- Restore bullets from your master document that contain matched terms you had cut.
- Add abbreviation-and-full-form pairs where the posting uses one and you use the other.
- Change nothing else — dates, titles and figures stay identical across every version.
Why this runs locally
A resume names your current employer, your colleagues by implication, and frequently work that is not public. A job description you are considering names an employer you have told nobody about.
Services that require an upload to check a resume acquire both, and a match percentage is a thin return for that. This one has no server component at all — the comparison happens in JavaScript on the page, so there is nothing to transmit and nothing to store.
It also means the tool works with the page open and no connection, and returns a result instantly rather than after a round trip.
The limits of any keyword comparison
Word overlap cannot tell whether your experience is any good, whether the level matches, or whether you would enjoy the job. It is a vocabulary check and nothing more.
It also cannot see the parts of an application that decide most outcomes: whether you applied early, whether anyone in the organisation knows you, and whether the form was completed properly.
Use it as one pass in a tailoring routine rather than as the routine itself. Fifteen minutes of reordering and rewriting with the posting open does more, and this is a useful way to check the result.
Running it against several postings at once
A single comparison tells you about one employer's phrasing. Running the same resume against three or four postings for the same role at different companies tells you about the field, which is considerably more useful.
Terms that appear in every posting are the field's actual vocabulary, and those are worth building into your master document permanently rather than adding per application. Terms appearing in only one are that employer's house style, and belong only in the version you send them.
It also calibrates the gaps. A tool missing from your resume that four out of four postings name is a genuine hole in your profile and worth addressing deliberately. The same tool named by one posting out of four is a preference rather than a requirement, and is rarely worth reshaping a career around.
A note on paid resume scanners
Several services sell a score against a posting, frequently with a percentage and a set of recommendations. The scores are generated by the service rather than by any employer's actual system, and different services give the same document markedly different numbers.
That is worth knowing before paying for one or acting on its advice. A recommendation to add terms you have no experience with is bad advice regardless of what produced it.
The mechanical checks that genuinely change outcomes — selectable text, contact details in the body, single column, a completed application form — are all free and take five minutes.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, with no account and no upload. The comparison runs as JavaScript in your browser, so nothing you paste is transmitted or stored — which matters when a resume names a current employer.
There is no threshold worth chasing. A resume containing every term in a posting reads as constructed. Aim to close vocabulary gaps — the same work under a different name — and leave genuine experience gaps alone.
Not directly, since most systems do not score and rank the way the advice assumes. It means your resume speaks the posting's language, which helps a recruiter find it in a search and recognise the fit quickly.
Their scores are generated by the service rather than by any employer's real system, and different services rate the same document very differently. The mechanical checks that actually change outcomes are free and take five minutes.