Research lab
Original ATS research, data studies, and benchmarks
The ATS Resume Checker research lab publishes original 2026 data on how enterprise Applicant Tracking Systems actually read your resume. Every study is methodology-first, built on primary datasets, and reproduced in our open-source scoring code.
Resumes audited
1,000+
De-identified public resumes across 5 role families.
Fortune 500 postings analyzed
500
Live postings scraped April to September 2026.
Template parse runs
300
50 templates across 6 ATS parser profiles.
Published studies
2026 ATS stats: 1,000 rejected resumes
A forensic autopsy of 1,000 real resumes tested against six ATS parsers. 73.2% failed. Here are the 8 technical triggers responsible, with a real text-stream diff.
73.2%
rejection rate
Fortune 500 ATS specs and keyword density
500 live Fortune 500 postings audited for ATS vendor, boolean weight, semantic recognition, date rules, acronym expansion, auto-sort cutoffs, and keyword density by role.
38.4%
Workday share
ATS examples: 50 resume templates benchmarked
50 popular resume templates (Word, Google Docs, Canva, LaTeX, online builders) tested across 6 ATS parsers for 300 total parse runs. See which pass and which fail.
94.2
top avg score
Citable summary at a glance
Pick any row to copy into a slide, cover letter, or follow-up research. Full context lives in each study.
| Metric | 2026 value |
|---|---|
| Average parser score of rejected resumes | 46 / 100 |
| Average parser score after 5-step recovery | 84 / 100 |
| Multi-column PDF text-stream collision rate | 41.8% |
| Workday share of Fortune 500 postings | 38.4% |
| Top category score (LaTeX single column) | 94.2 / 100 |
| Bottom category score (Canva infographic PDF) | 21.6 / 100 |
| Acronym pairing score lift (Taleo, iCIMS) | +19.4% |
Methodology and primary sources live on /methodology and /sources. Author: Nauman Pathan.
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