ATS Advice Is Everywhere. This Skill Makes It Auditable.

The second of three posts on the English resume skills we imported today. The first covers a research-first tailoring pipeline; the third covers a seven-reviewer adversarial panel.

Resume advice is the most abundant and least operational genre on the internet. Everyone knows the resume should be "ATS-friendly"; almost nobody can say what that means in checkable steps. resume-ats-optimizer is an attempt to close that gap, and it mostly succeeds.

It scores 8.0.

What is actually inside

The skill is a four-part audit, not a rewriting engine.

A compatibility checklist covers file format, fonts and sizing, standard section headers, and contact-information placement. The rules are specific: .docx or text-based PDF, Arial or Calibri or Georgia or Times New Roman, 10–12pt body text, no text boxes or columns or tables, no headers or footers, dates in MM/YYYY, standard bullets.

A keyword extraction step splits the job description into hard skills, soft skills and industry terms, then checks exact matches, synonyms and frequency.

A match score with a stated formula: keywords matched divided by total required keywords. Twenty required keywords with fifteen present is a 75% match, and the skill sets a target of 80% or higher.

A fixed report format with an overall score out of 100, per-section pass or fail, listed formatting issues, a keyword gap table, recommended changes, and an estimated new match score.

Content is the strong dimension: 9.0

The evaluator's summary was that the body is "concrete and consistent, with strong examples and a reusable report format." That is the right verdict. The skill does not merely say "avoid tables"; it explains why the parser fails, gives the acceptable alternatives, and folds the result into a score a candidate can track across revisions.

It also names the failure modes directly: creative formatting, unconventional section names, missing keywords, and keyword stuffing. The fourth is important. The same skill that tells you to maximize keyword coverage also tells you not to force keywords unnaturally, and it recommends variations rather than repetition. That internal check is why content scores a full point above workflow.

Trigger is the weak dimension: 6.5

The skill tells you when to use it. It does not tell you when not to.

The description lists ATS optimization, pass checks, unexplained rejections, and keyword mentions — then adds: "Also use when the user provides a resume file and mentions they're applying to jobs." That last clause is broad enough to fire on almost any resume conversation, including ones where a different skill is the better tool. It overlaps with resume-tailoring, review-resume, and hiring-panel.

This is the same routing problem we keep finding across the directory: a positive-only description is a skill that fires too often. Compare the tailoring skill's explicit "DO NOT use for" list, which is why its trigger score is two points higher.

Workflow is competent, not exceptional: 7.5

The procedure has a checklist and a re-scoring verification step, which is more than most audit skills provide. Two things are missing:

• No intake step. It does not ask what the resume is targeting, what the candidate cannot change, or which claims are uncertain. It analyzes what it was given.
• No ask-before-editing gate. The output is recommendations, so this is less dangerous than an automatic rewrite, but the skill never explicitly hands the decision back to the user before changing anything.

A resume is a document with facts about a person's career. The missing gate is not a security flaw — the evaluator scored security at 9.5 — but it is a missing safety habit, and it costs workflow points.

One claim to treat carefully

The skill opens with the line that "75% of resumes are rejected by Applicant Tracking Systems before a human ever sees them." That figure circulates widely and is rarely traced to a study. It is best treated as a prior about how much automated filtering exists, not as a measurement. The useful content of the skill does not depend on the number: the checklist and the match formula are checkable on their own.

How to use it

Run this skill as a pre-flight audit before the more expensive work:

1. Use resume-ats-optimizer to catch parseability problems and keyword gaps.
2. Use resume-tailoring if you have a specific role and want a tailored package.
3. Use hiring-panel if you want the resume attacked from seven reader perspectives.

The ATS score is a means, not a goal. A resume can score 100 on keyword match and still fail the human ten-second read. The skill is honest about that boundary; the candidate has to keep it too.

⚡ resume-tailoring 9.1 Use when creating tailored resumes for job applications - researches company/role, creates optimi… ⬇ 1 ⚡ hiring-panel 8.4 Run a resume past a hiring panel of seven Claudes that try to reject it (an automated screen, a h… ⬇ 0

The takeaway

An ATS skill earns its score by making the invisible parser visible — not by promising to beat it. This one gives you the checklist, the formula and the report. What it does not give you is a reason to stop thinking after the score appears.