ATS - HR and Talent use AI. And so will you

The tech job market is what it is (Q4 2025). I suppose it's a little tougher in America than in good old Germany.

I decided to infer (without my direct opinion) how HR tools would auto-read a resume / curriculum vitae / CV.

• I assume that if 100+ CVs hit the inbox, a modern (down-scaled) HR team will use any automation tool that they can get.
• I assume that the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) vendors of tools like Ashby, Greenhouse, etc. do not invest tons of time into the details of specific aesthetic CV styles. Either it complies with their reading tools or not. Is that biased? Is that fair? I don't know. That's not my point.
• What I know is that under the EU AI Act such systems are considered extra-relevant because they can make career-impacting decisions.

It's a brave new world...

For that reason, I have open-sourced a little helper with

• a generic name,
• generic code,
• and generic approach.

By intention: the most generic software.

GitHub - norandom/ats-agent: Full AI-gen’ed CV checker that uses OpenAI

Full AI-gen’ed CV checker that uses OpenAI. Contribute to norandom/ats-agent development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHubnorandom

• support for English (international)
• support for German (incl. nation-specific rules like AGG)
• Keyword analysis
  • avoid overspecification / niche specialities
  • structure check (ATS systems may not work well with multiple columns or special bullet styles)
• Content quality
  • OpenAI gpt-4o determines this based on a prompt
  • Job portal standards are in the prompt as well

I think if you apply for a job, you can exchange the keywords yourself. Or write your own AI agent to do that for you. That's not the problem.

Keyword optimization example:

Summary

I don't make the rules, but the key is to know (a little better) what they could be.

1. raise awareness that recruiters will not read 100+ CVs
2. clarify the capabilities of modern GenAI services like OpenAI: what your CV has to comply with.
   OpenAI is the market leader. HR tools in the EU / USA will likely avoid DeepSeek. Mistral could, however, be interesting.
3. I understand that the tool is not fair (biased)
   1. I don't say that I would use this tool as a hiring manager. But as a tough feedback tool to provide a better document to the existing HR process myself

Final note: I am not emotional about the CV documents. I know many people are. Don't go there. Individuality is a great thing, but a CV doesn't have to express your creativity.