DEV Community: Denys Ivshyn

I Built an AI Resume Optimizer and Learned Something Unexpected About ATS

Denys Ivshyn — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 22:06:39 +0000

Over the past few months, I’ve been building an AI-powered resume optimization platform.

The original goal sounded simple:

Help people tailor their resumes to specific job descriptions.

But after analyzing thousands of resumes and job descriptions, I realized something interesting.

Most resumes don’t get rejected because candidates lack skills.

They get rejected because recruiters—and increasingly ATS systems—can’t easily identify those skills.

The biggest mistakes I keep seeing

Generic summaries copied from templates.
Bullet points that describe responsibilities instead of achievements.
Missing keywords from the target job description.
Poor formatting that breaks ATS parsing.
Applying with exactly the same resume to every company.

Most people believe ATS is some mysterious AI that randomly rejects resumes.

In reality, modern ATS software is mostly designed to organize candidates, search keywords, and make recruiters’ jobs easier.

The real problem is that recruiters often spend only a short time reviewing each resume before deciding whether to continue.

Building the solution

Instead of creating another resume template generator, I wanted something different.

The platform analyzes:

Resume structure
Keyword coverage
Skills alignment
Missing sections
ATS compatibility
Resume vs Job Description matching

The idea is to provide actionable feedback instead of just assigning a score.

What surprised me

Many resumes that looked “good” visually actually performed poorly when compared against specific job descriptions.

Meanwhile, some simple-looking resumes matched significantly better because they communicated relevant experience more clearly.

That completely changed how I think about resume writing.

I’d love your feedback

If you’re a recruiter or engineer who’s been involved in hiring:

What resume mistakes do you see most often?
Do you think ATS is overblamed?
What would you improve in tools that help candidates optimize resumes?

I’d genuinely love to hear your perspective.

How We Learned That Most Resume Rejections Happen Before Humans See Your CV

Denys Ivshyn — Sun, 24 May 2026 20:45:47 +0000

I used to think people got rejected because they lacked skills.

Then I started looking deeper.

Hundreds of applications. Strong candidates. Good experience. Yet almost no interviews.

The weird part? Many of them were qualified.

The problem wasn’t always people. Sometimes the problem was the signal.

Modern hiring often starts long before a recruiter opens your resume. ATS systems scan documents, compare keywords, analyze structure, and decide whether your CV even deserves attention.

We realized something uncomfortable: many candidates never lose to another person. They lose to formatting, positioning, and missing context.

That observation became one of the reasons we started building CVBoosta.

Curious to test it? Try CVBoosta and tell us what you think: cvboosta.com

Why Your Resume Gets Rejected Before Anyone Sees It?

Denys Ivshyn — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 21:40:50 +0000

Most people think they don’t get interviews because they lack experience.

But in reality, many resumes never reach a recruiter.

They get filtered out by ATS systems.

These systems scan resumes for:

keywords
structure
formatting

If your resume doesn’t match, it gets rejected automatically.

Common mistakes:

missing keywords from job descriptions
weak bullet points
complex formatting

This means even strong candidates get ignored.

To understand this better, I built a small tool:
[https://cvboosta.com]

It analyzes resumes and shows what needs improvement.

Optimizing your resume is often the difference between getting ignored and getting interviews.