How to Improve Your ATS Score in 2026 (8 Proven Steps)

Run a Baseline Scan First

Before making any changes, get a current ATS score so you know exactly what you're working with. Upload your resume and the job description into an ATS checker and note your score and the specific missing keywords it identifies.

This gives you a target and a prioritized list. Fixing the highest-impact missing keywords first — usually hard skills, job titles, and required certifications — will move your score the most with the least effort.

Make a note of your baseline score so you can confirm improvement after each round of edits. This feedback loop is the fastest way to learn what actually moves the needle on a given job description.

Our free ATS checker gives you an instant score and a prioritized list of missing keywords — no account required to get started.

Add Missing Keywords From the Job Description

The single highest-impact action you can take is adding the keywords your ATS scan flagged as missing. Go through each missing term and find a natural place to include it in your resume — your summary, skills section, or an experience bullet.

Use the exact phrasing from the job description. If the posting says "cross-functional project management" and your resume says "worked across teams," the ATS may not give you credit. Exact phrase match always beats paraphrase.

Prioritize keywords by type in this order:

• Hard skills and tools — software names, platforms, programming languages, methodologies
• Required certifications — PMP, CPA, AWS Certified, etc.
• Target job title — use the exact title from the posting in your summary
• Industry-specific terminology — sector language that distinguishes your field
• Soft skills mentioned explicitly — only when listed as requirements, not as filler

Each keyword you add in context — not just dropped into a list — carries more weight because it demonstrates applied use, not just familiarity.

Fix Your Skills Section

A clearly labeled skills section is one of the most reliable ways to improve ATS score quickly. ATS parsers are designed to look for skills sections and weight them heavily. If yours is buried, poorly labeled, or missing entirely, that's suppressing your score.

Label it clearly — "Skills," "Technical Skills," or "Core Competencies" — and list hard skills as individual items. Group by category if you have many. This section should directly mirror the hard skills mentioned in the job description.

Avoid long-form sentences in your skills section. A clean list parses more reliably than a paragraph. For example:

• Good: Python · SQL · Tableau · Google Analytics · A/B Testing
• Avoid: "Proficient in various data tools and analytical platforms"

Place your skills section near the top of the resume — ideally after your summary — so the parser encounters it early. If you're using our AI resume builder, skills sections are automatically structured for ATS compatibility.

Rewrite Your Professional Summary With Target Keywords

Your professional summary is parsed early and weighted heavily. If it uses vague language ("results-driven professional") instead of specific keywords ("Senior Data Engineer with 6 years of experience in Spark, Kafka, and AWS"), you're wasting prime ATS real estate.

Rewrite your summary to include your target job title, your years of experience, and 2–3 of the most important hard skills from the job description. This alone can meaningfully lift your score on a well-matched role.

A strong ATS-optimized summary follows this structure:

• [Job Title] with [X years] of experience in [core skill 1], [core skill 2], and [core skill 3].
• Follow with one sentence about your most relevant achievement or domain focus.
• Close with a brief statement about what you bring to the target type of role.

Keep it to 3–5 lines. Every sentence should earn its place by reinforcing your relevance to the specific posting.

Fix Formatting Issues That Block Parsing

Formatting problems silently destroy ATS scores by preventing the parser from reading your content correctly. The parser can only score what it can read — and common design choices actively hide your best content from it.

Common formatting problems that lower ATS scores:

• Multi-column layouts — text in right columns is often skipped entirely
• Text boxes — content inside text boxes is frequently invisible to parsers
• Tables — cells disrupt reading order and cause content to merge incorrectly
• Headers and footers — contact info placed here is often lost
• Graphics, icons, logos, and decorative dividers
• Custom fonts that don't render in plain-text extraction
• Image-based PDFs (scanned or exported from design tools like Canva)

Convert to a clean single-column layout. Use standard fonts (Arial, Calibri, Georgia, or Times New Roman). Save as .docx or a text-based PDF. All your hard-earned keywords need to be in parseable text — not locked inside a table cell the ATS cannot read.

Use Standard Section Headings

ATS parsers look for standard headings to identify sections: "Experience," "Education," "Skills," "Summary." Creative headings like "My Journey," "What I Bring," or "Where I've Been" confuse parsers and cause content to be miscategorized or missed entirely.

Stick to conventional headings throughout. This is one of the easiest fixes and costs nothing in terms of your resume's readability to humans.

Recommended standard headings by section:

• Work history: Work Experience, Professional Experience, Experience
• Education: Education, Academic Background
• Skills: Skills, Technical Skills, Core Competencies
• Intro: Summary, Professional Summary, Profile
• Credentials: Certifications, Licenses, Credentials
• Projects: Projects, Key Projects, Selected Projects

Tailor for Every Application — Not Just Once

An ATS score is specific to a job description. A resume that scores 80% on one role might score 45% on a different role with different requirements. Your score only stays high if you actively tailor your resume to each posting.

This doesn't mean rewriting from scratch every time. Efficient tailoring for each application looks like this:

• Update your summary to reflect the exact job title and top 2–3 skills in the posting
• Reorder your skills section so the most relevant skills appear first
• Swap job-specific language into 2–3 experience bullets
• Add any missing required certifications or tools you actually have
• Re-run your ATS scan to confirm your score improved before submitting

This process takes 10–15 minutes per application when you have a clean master resume to work from. The Get Resumatch job matching AI automates much of this tailoring — it identifies keyword gaps and rewrites the relevant sections for you based on the specific job description.

Don't Keyword Stuff — Aim for Natural Placement

There's a ceiling to keyword optimization. Repeating keywords excessively, listing skills you don't have, or padding your resume with terms just to score higher will hurt you when you reach a human reviewer — and some modern ATS platforms flag obvious stuffing.

The target is a resume that scores well because it genuinely matches the role — not one that games the score through unnatural repetition. Aim for each important keyword to appear once or twice in meaningful context.

Context matters. A keyword in a bullet that shows measurable impact ("Reduced customer churn 18% using Salesforce CRM and predictive analytics") is far stronger than the same keyword dropped into a list. The ATS awards the match; the human awards the story.

Using a Master Resume for Every Application

A single resume sent to every job is the most common reason for low scores. Your master resume is a starting point — not a finished product. Every submission needs at minimum a tailored summary, reordered skills section, and adjusted experience bullets to match the specific posting.

Putting Contact Information Only in the Header

Many applicants place their name, email, phone, and LinkedIn URL inside a designed header area at the top of their resume. When ATS parsers process your file, header content is often skipped or separated from the main body. Include your contact details in the main text area of the resume as well.

Using Abbreviations Without Spelling Out the Full Term

ATS parsers don't always equate "PPC" with "pay-per-click" or "CRM" with "customer relationship management." If the job description uses the full term, include both versions in your resume — spell it out first, then add the abbreviation in parentheses, or use both naturally across different sections.

Omitting Dates From Experience Entries

Missing dates on work experience entries can confuse ATS parsers that calculate total years of experience. Always include start and end dates (month and year) for each position. Gaps are fine — unexplained missing dates are more likely to create parsing errors than a clearly labeled employment gap.