I used to think resumes fail because people aren’t skilled enough.
That’s wrong.
Most resumes fail because they never reach a human.
While building an AI-powered resume ATS tool, I spent time understanding how Applicant Tracking Systems actually work. What I found was frustrating, especially for genuinely good candidates.
ATS doesn’t read resumes like humans
ATS systems don’t “understand” design.
They extract text, match patterns, and score relevance. That’s it.
If your resume relies on:
- Tables
- Icons
- Fancy columns
- Visual timelines
there’s a good chance important information never gets parsed correctly.
A clean-looking resume to a human can look broken to an ATS.
Keyword stuffing doesn’t work anymore
A common piece of advice is to repeat keywords as much as possible.
That used to work.
Modern ATS systems look at context, not repetition.
They care about:
- Where a skill appears
- Which role it’s connected to
- Whether it matches the job description naturally
Writing “React” ten times won’t help if it doesn’t align with the role.
One resume for every job is a losing strategy
This is the most painful truth.
Most people send the same resume to dozens of jobs and hope for the best. ATS systems don’t reward that.
They expect resumes to be tailored:
- Skills aligned to the role
- Experience phrased using job-specific language
- Keywords that actually match the posting
Manually doing this for every application is exhausting. Most people just give up.
The worst part is the silence
The hardest part of job hunting isn’t rejection.
It’s not knowing why.
Your resume gets rejected in seconds, without feedback, without explanation, without a human involved. You’re left guessing what went wrong.
That’s the part that bothered me the most.
Why I’m building a resume ATS tool
I didn’t start building this to “disrupt hiring”.
I started because I wanted answers.
I’m building a tool that:
- Scores resumes the way ATS does
- Shows what’s missing or misaligned
- Helps tailor resumes to specific job descriptions
- Focuses on clarity instead of buzzwords
It’s still a work in progress. I’m learning as I go.
Final thoughts
If you’re job hunting right now, you’re not bad at what you do.
Your resume might just be speaking a different language than the system reading it.
If you’re a developer, designer, or founder building in public, I’d love to connect and share notes. I’ll keep writing about what I learn along the way.
Top comments (0)