Knowitol Research — Original analysis
Role-by-role ATS gap report
Average match scores and most-common missing keywords, broken down by job title.
Executive summary
Average ATS match scores vary dramatically by target role — and the gap is rarely driven by candidate quality. It is driven by how stable the role's vocabulary is. Roles with rapidly evolving terminology (data, ML, cloud platforms) post systematically lower match scores than roles with stable, decades-old vocabulary (finance, legal, classical engineering disciplines).
Methodology
Across all completed scans in the last 12 months we group by the candidate-supplied target role, lower-cased and trimmed. We compute the average match score and the single most common missing keyword for each role, suppressing any role with fewer than 50 scans. Internal test traffic is excluded.
Average ATS match score by target role
The chart below shows the average score by role across the roles that meet our minimum sample-size threshold. Roles at the bottom are not 'harder' — they are roles where the gap between candidate self-description and modern job-description vocabulary is widest.
What this tells job seekers
- If your average score for your target role is below 65, the highest-leverage move is not formatting — it is role-vocabulary research before tailoring.
- Roles with high vocabulary churn (data/ML/cloud) require more frequent resume updates than roles with stable vocabulary.
- Cross-functional candidates (e.g., 'PM with data background') consistently score lower than single-discipline candidates because both vocabularies have to be maintained.
Sources
- Knowitol production scan database (2026)
Frequently asked questions
How do you make sure individual users are not identifiable?
Every published statistic is computed across at least 50 records (our minimum cell size). Cells with fewer than 50 records are suppressed entirely. We never publish per-user, per-resume, or per-employer data — only category-level aggregates. Internal test traffic (is_fake users) is excluded from every query.
Can journalists cite this study?
Yes. All Knowitol Research data is released under CC BY 4.0 — free to cite, quote, or reproduce with attribution to Knowitol Research and a link to the source report. The press kit at /research/press includes a copy-pasteable boilerplate.
How often is this report updated?
Aggregations are re-computed on every publish from the live scan database, and we re-publish quarterly. Each report shows the exact generation timestamp under Methodology.
Cite this report
Research, K. (2026, April 21). Role-by-role ATS gap report. Knowitol Research. https://knowitol.com/research/role-by-role-ats-gap-report-2026