API Technical Specs

Resume Quality

This is an advanced level feature. Please ignore the data in the Resume Quality output unless/until you have discussed its proper use with Sovren, and been approved to use it.

The Resume Quality section output should NEVER IN ANY SENSE WHATSOEVER be used as an indication that the Parser has failed or performed poorly. The sole purpose of the Resume Quality section is to help you, the integrator, to understand substandard aspects of the candidate's resume. The majority of resumes will have at least one entry in this section. AGAIN, that does not mean that parsing "failed" or that the Parser needs fixing.

Please recall that candidates' resumes fall within a bell curve. Some resumes are really well done. Some are horrible. Most fall into the Good to Pretty Good range. The Resume Quality section is designed to help you understand where the resume falls in that bell curve. Great resumes will parse great. Horrible resumes will parse poorly. That is a limitation of the quality of the resume. The Parser cannot fix candidate mistakes.

For instance, the Resume Quality section may report that the candidate provided neither a phone nor an email address. Reporting that fact does not indicate that the Parser failed. The failure was that the candidate did not include a way to be contacted electronically. We cannot fix that, nor can you, the integrator. Only the candidate can.

You should not use the Resume Quality section to communicate problems/suggestions to candidates unless you have a very sophisticated workflow and step-by-step improvement process. Otherwise, you will frustrate candidates and do more harm than good.

The Resume Quality is a series of assessments of how well the resume conforms to best practices for constructing machine-readable resumes. Assessments are ordered by severity, from fatal problems (which nevertheless may not have caused an actual parsing problem), to suggested improvements. Each assessment contains a list of findings, describing the exact issue with the resume and a recommendation for how the candidate could resolve the issue.

"ResumeQuality": [
    {
        "Level": "Suggested Improvements",
        "Findings": [
            {
                "QualityCode": "111",
                "Message": "References section found in resume. References should not be included in a resume."
            },
            {
                "QualityCode": "113",
                "SectionIdentifiers": [
                    {
                        "SectionType:": "PATENTS"
                    },
                    {
                        "SectionType:": "SPEAKING"
                    },
                    {
                        "SectionType:": "OTHER_PUBLICATIONS"
                    }
                ],
                "Message": "Publications should not be included in a resume."
            },
            {
                "QualityCode": "132",
                "Message": "Multiple email addresses were found in the contact information. Only one email address should be included in a resume."
            },
            {
                "QualityCode": "133",
                "Message": "Multiple phone numbers were found in the contact information. Only one phone number should be included in a resume."
            },
            {
                "QualityCode": "151",
                "Identifiers": [
                    {
                        "SectionType:": "OBJECTIVE"
                    },
                    {
                        "SectionType:": "SUMMARY"
                    },
                    {
                        "SectionType:": "WORK HISTORY"
                    },
                    {
                        "SectionType:": "EDUCATION"
                    }
                ],
                "Message": "Every section should have a clear, unambiguous, commonly-used header on a separate line directly above the content associated with it."
            }
        ]
    }
]