Glossary
Resume & ATS terms, defined.
Plain-English definitions of the words that decide whether your resume gets seen — ATS score, keywords, parsing, tailoring, and more. Each term has its own page with a short answer and the detail behind it.
Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
An applicant tracking system (ATS) is software employers use to collect, organize, parse, and filter job applications. It reads each resume into structured data and helps recruiters search and rank candidates before manual review.
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ATS score
An ATS score is a 0–100 rating of how well a resume matches a specific job description — typically based on keyword overlap, required skills, and formatting readability. A higher score means a closer match to what the job asks for.
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ATS-friendly resume
An ATS-friendly resume is one formatted so applicant tracking software can parse it accurately: a single-column layout, standard section headings, no tables or text inside images, and standard fonts.
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Functional resume
A functional resume groups content by skill rather than by job, downplaying dates. It can help hide employment gaps or a career change — but recruiters are wary of it and ATS parsers often struggle with its structure.
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Ghost job
A ghost job is a posting kept open without active hiring — to build a candidate pipeline, satisfy policy, or project growth. A meaningful share of online listings are ghost jobs, so it’s worth verifying a posting before investing time.
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Hard skills vs soft skills
Hard skills are teachable, measurable abilities like coding, accounting, or a specific tool. Soft skills are interpersonal traits like communication or leadership. ATS keyword matching weights hard skills; recruiters weigh both.
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Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is cramming a resume with job-description terms — often hidden or repeated unnaturally — to game an ATS. It backfires: recruiters spot it, modern systems weight context, and it makes a resume read poorly to humans.
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Quantified achievements
Quantified achievements are resume bullets backed by numbers — percentages, dollars, time, or scale — that turn vague claims into measurable results, such as "cut onboarding time by 40%" instead of "improved onboarding".
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Resume action verbs
Action verbs are strong, specific verbs that start resume bullet points — like "led", "built", "reduced", or "launched" — showing what you did and its impact instead of passively listing duties.
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Resume keywords
Resume keywords are the specific skills, tools, qualifications, and job-title terms a resume shares with a job description. Matching them helps a resume rank higher in ATS searches and signals relevance to recruiters.
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Resume optimization
Resume optimization is improving a resume so it both passes applicant tracking systems and persuades human recruiters — through clean formatting, job-matched keywords, and strong, quantified achievement bullets.
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Resume parsing
Resume parsing is the process an ATS uses to read a resume file and extract its information into structured fields — name, contact details, work history, skills, and education — so the data can be searched and filtered.
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Resume tailoring
Resume tailoring is adjusting a resume for a specific job — matching its keywords, reordering bullets to lead with the most relevant experience, and mirroring its language — so it scores higher and reads as a closer fit.
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Reverse-chronological resume
A reverse-chronological resume lists work experience from most recent to oldest. It’s the format recruiters and ATS software expect by default, making it the safest structure for most job seekers.
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