Category 1
Structure
Required sections present and correctly ordered (professional experience, education, skills, languages), a clear title, and one-page discipline for most profiles.
Methodology
How CVScore scores your CV.
20 criteria, 4 categories, weighted on the ATS actually used in the French market. No black box: every point lost tells you what to change and why it matters.
The four categories
Category 2
Format
Machine-readable text, standard fonts, no complex tables or text-in-image, dates in a parsable format, contact details outside headers and footers.
Category 3
Content
Action verbs, quantified results, keywords aligned with the job you target — measured against the vocabulary of your sector, not a generic dictionary.
Category 4
Readability
Spelling and syntax, sentence length, text-to-whitespace ratio — what makes a recruiter's six-second scan land on the right information.
The detailed 20-criteria breakdown (in French) is published on the French methodology page. Same engine, same criteria.
Methodology questions
Is the score a guarantee of getting interviews?
No — and any tool promising that is overselling. The score measures readability and alignment: whether parsing systems can read your CV and whether its content matches what recruiters in your field look for. Decisions stay human.
Which ATS is the score based on?
The criteria are weighted on practices observed across the main ATS used in the French market — Workday, Taleo, SmartRecruiters and Lever — plus French recruiter conventions (one page, section order, CEFR language levels).
Why does my beautiful CV score low?
Usually because the PDF is not machine-readable: text drawn as shapes, multi-column layouts parsed in the wrong order, key details in headers or images. The score explains each blocker and how to fix it.