ATS CV Checker and Creator for Biologists and Ecologists

What an applicant tracking system does to your CV

An applicant tracking system is the software an employer uses to receive and sort applications. Before a person ever sees your name, that software strips your file down to plain text, hunts for your contact details, your roles and your dates, and compares what it found against the wording of the advert.

The important part is what happens to anything it cannot parse. It is not scored down. It simply does not exist. A CV built in two columns interleaves when the text is pulled out, so a line reading “great crested newt survey licence” arrives as fragments sitting between fragments of a different sentence. A skills bar showing your QGIS level is a picture, and a picture holds no words. A CV exported as an image, or scanned, contains no text at all, which is why some applications score zero with a perfect career behind them.

This is also why a plain CV often beats a beautiful one. The designed version is for the human on the other side of the filter. You have to get through the filter first.

The second half of the problem is wording. The system matches the advert’s language, not your intention. If the person specification says Phase 1 habitat survey and your CV says habitat mapping, you have done the work and still failed the criterion. Nobody is being unfair. The machine is matching strings.

The twelve checks this tool runs on your file

1. Whether the file holds real text or only a picture of text
2. Whether an email address can be found in the body, not in a header or image
3. Whether a phone number can be read
4. Whether the standard sections are detectable: experience, education, skills
5. Whether your dates are present and in one consistent format
6. Length, in words and in estimated pages
7. Signs of columns or tables that scramble when the text is extracted
8. Images, logos and charts carrying information the parser cannot read
9. Unusual symbols and bullet characters that break the text layer
10. Repetition heavy enough to read as keyword stuffing to a person
11. Personal details many employers are not permitted to consider
12. Acronyms used without their full form appearing at least once

Alongside those, the match score compares your wording against every requirement in the advert, separated into essential and desirable, because the two are scored differently by almost every employer.

Why a general CV checker fails ecologists

A general resume scorer does not know that a bat licence, a Phase 1 habitat survey, a breeding bird transect, a quadrat, eDNA sampling and a camera trap grid are evidence of six different things. It counts words. This one carries an ecology and biology vocabulary of around one hundred and fifty terms, so it reads survey work as survey work, tells you which of the advert’s requirements your field seasons already prove, and tells you plainly which ones they do not.

It then does the part that actually changes outcomes. For every criterion you miss, it says how someone in your position closes that gap, whether that is a season of logged nights with a licensed bat worker, a free afternoon in QGIS mapping your own thesis sites, or a one day Defra metric course.

How to use it

1. Add your CV, by file or by pasting the text. The free check runs inside your browser and nothing is uploaded.
2. Paste the advert, including the person specification. That section is what gets scored.
3. Read your two scores and the gap list, then decide honestly which gaps you can answer today and which are real.
4. Rebuild the CV around that advert and download it as a PDF or an editable Word file.

Questions people ask

Is my CV uploaded anywhere?

No. The check runs entirely inside your browser. Your CV, your photo and the advert never leave the tab. Only the optional AI wording pass sends text anywhere, and only when you choose to run it.

Can I paste a LinkedIn or Indeed link?

Those sites block automated reading, so the link comes back empty. Copy the advert text and paste it instead. Company career pages and government portals usually work from the link.

What counts as a good score?

Seventy or above on both scores is worth sending. Below forty five means the application is very unlikely to reach a person, whatever your experience is.

Does a high score guarantee an interview?

No. It means your CV survives the first filter and lands in front of a person with the right evidence visible. That is the step most applications lose, and it is the only step a tool can fix.

One page or two?

Two pages for practitioner roles in ecology and conservation. One page only if the advert demands it. Academic CVs run longer and follow different rules entirely.

PDF or Word?

A PDF containing real text, unless the advert asks for Word. Both downloads here are text based, so both parse correctly.

Should I include a photo?

Include it for Germany, Austria and much of continental Europe, where it is expected. Leave it out for the UK, Ireland, the United States, Canada and Australia, where it can get an application set aside before it is read. The tool builds both versions.

Will it invent experience I do not have?

Never. Where you do not meet a criterion, it says so and tells you how to close the gap. A CV claiming a licence you do not hold ends the process at the interview, and ends it badly.