More often than not, the resume you submit for a job is being read by an applicant tracking system (ATS) before a human ever sees it. You may be a qualified candidate, but if your resume isn’t written with ATS in mind, you may never hear back from recruiters.
With AI becoming more prevalent in the recruiting process, it is important for students to know how to effectively use it in their job search. It is not enough to simply put your resume through ChatGPT and expect to hear back from all the jobs you apply for.
To better support students in their career journey, Quinncia, an AI-powered resume tool, is now available to all currently enrolled Trojans!
Here are all the steps for how to use this new tool to your advantage and beat Application Tracking Systems. This content was covered in our AI Career Tools Series session with Quinncia’s Director of University Relationships, Mikaela Janecek (workshop recording available on YouTube!).
Step 1: Understand What You’re Up Against
An ATS isn’t reading your resume the way a person does; it’s pulling specific data into specific “buckets” — school, degree, job titles, dates, skills — and it can only do that if your resume is structured in a way it recognizes.
Computers are able to catch small errors, like a stray typo or inconsistent formatting, far more than a human eye would. Before you touch any AI tool, know the goal: make your resume something a machine can parse cleanly, not just something that looks good to you.
Step 2: Use Quinncia as a Diagnostic Tool
Quinncia runs your resume through TextKernel, the same parsing engine behind many real-world ATS platforms (including Handshake), so a clean read through the platform is a strong signal you’ll parse well elsewhere.
Upload as a Word doc if you want to make edits directly on the analysis page afterward, or as a PDF if you’re just checking. Either way, treat the results as your ATS “dress rehearsal”.
Step 3: Chase Zero Flags, Not a High Score
When getting your resume feedback from Quinncia, what matters most is your flag count.
- Flags (red) are issues that will actively block the ATS from reading your information correctly.
- Improvements (yellow) are optional polish. Your real target is zero flags, which means your resume is parsing cleanly.
Step 4: Work Through the Three Categories Systematically
Rather than randomly editing, use Quinncia’s structure to fix things in order:
- General: Are your core sections (contact info, education, experience) present and labeled in a way the ATS recognizes? This is your foundation. Fix it first.
- Formatting: Margins, font consistency, spacing, punctuation, grammar, spelling. This is usually where most flags live, and it’s often quick to fix using Quinncia’s built-in formatting bar without leaving the page.
- Content: Are your bullet points highlighting real skills? Are you overusing “I,” “me,” or “your” statements? This is the layer that actually helps you get noticed once you’re parsing correctly.
Step 5: Use the Skills Gap Analyzer to Tailor for Specific Jobs
This is where AI stops being a proofreader and starts being a strategy tool.
Paste a job description into the Skills Gap Analyzer, and Quinncia tells you exactly which of your skills already match and which skills are missing. Instead of sending the same generic resume to every posting, you can adjust your bullet points for each application based on real gaps.
Step 6: Check How the ATS Actually Wants a Skill Phrased
A skill can be on your resume and still get missed simply because of how it’s written.
Quinncia’s technical skills search plugs directly into TextKernel’s backend, so you can look up the exact, current phrasing an ATS expects — for instance, confirming it’s looking for “Adobe Photoshop” rather than just “Photoshop” — and adjust your wording to match.
Step 7: Use Quick Scan to Confirm Fixes as You Go
Instead of making a batch of edits and hoping they all land, use the quick scan function to check a single flagged bullet point right after you fix it. It’s a fast feedback loop that keeps you from having to guess whether an edit actually resolved the issue.
Step 8: Don’t Rely on Autosave
Nothing in Quinncia autosaves.
As you fix issues, flags fade from red to gray, and the Reanalyze and Submit button becomes clickable. Your resume, score, and flag count only update once you click it. If you try to leave with unsaved changes, you’ll get a warning. Get in the habit of hitting that button after every editing session.
Step 9: Keep Separate Copies for Different Applications
Quinncia’s interactive editor only holds your most recently uploaded resume.
When you upload a new file, it overwrites the last one. If you’re tailoring different versions for different roles (say, one for marketing internships, one for data roles), save a copy of each version on your computer before uploading the next one.
Uploads themselves are unlimited, and you can download your last three analyses as a PDF to track your progress over time.
Step 10: Loop in a Human
AI feedback is great for catching structural and parsing issues, but it’s not a substitute for judgment on things like how to cite published research or school-specific formatting norms.
Reach out to the USC Career Center or your school-based center for additional in-person reviews. The USC Career Center hosts drop-in resume and cover letter reviews Monday to Friday from 1:00 PM – 3:30 PM in STU 110 (no appointment necessary!).
The Takeaway
Beating an ATS isn’t about tricking the system — the “hide the job description in white text” trick you might see on social media gets detected and can actually hurt you.
It’s about understanding how the system reads your resume and using AI feedback to close the gap between how your resume looks to you and how it actually gets parsed by a machine.
By using Quinncia as a diagnostic and tailoring tool, not just a one-time check, this tool can turn the ATS from a black box you’re guessing about into something you can actually test, adjust, and beat.
