What recruiters actually see
The employer receives a file and whatever their system extracted from it. They do not receive your scores, your diff, or the fact you used a tool.
It is worth being precise about this, because a lot of effort goes into the wrong half.
What reaches the employer
- The file you sent. As a PDF or a Word document, exactly as you approved it.
- Whatever their system extracted from it. Name, contact details, roles with employers and dates, education, skills. This is a copy, made by their parser, and it is what gets searched.
- Your answers to their form questions. Including the ones about status and identity, which are always yours to answer.
- Your cover letter, where you sent one.
What does not reach them
- Your Fit score and your CV readiness score. Both are computed in your browser, against their advert, and neither is transmitted.
- The before and after diff, and every change you accepted or rejected.
- The fact that a tool was involved at all.
- Your tracker, your other applications, and how many jobs you have sent this week.
What their side may add
Their own system may rank or filter, on their criteria. That number belongs to them and does not correspond to anything you saw here. Some systems also record when the application arrived, which is why applying inside the first days of a posting matters more than most advice admits.
What this means in practice
Because the extraction is the thing that gets searched, the document's readability to a parser is worth as much as its readability to a person.
| Where the effort goes | What it buys |
|---|---|
| A number moving from 61 to 68 | Your own decision about whether to apply |
| A role that parses with its employer and dates | A record that can be found in their search at all |
| Headings a parser recognises | Your experience filed as experience rather than as nothing |
| A real measurement in the top bullets | The thing a human reads in the six seconds they give it |
The one thing worth remembering
The score is a tool for deciding where to spend your next hour. It is not a message to the employer, and it is not a prediction of what they will do. Read it as the first, never as the second.
The two numbers themselves are explained in Fit vs CV readiness.
Questions about this
Does the employer see my match score?
No. It is computed in your browser against their advert and never sent anywhere.
Can they tell I tailored the CV?
They see a CV that fits the posting, which is what every good applicant sends. What they cannot see is a diff, a tool name or a version history.
Do they see how many jobs I applied to?
Not through us. Their own system knows what you sent to them, and nothing about what you sent to anybody else.
Does their system score me too?
Many do rank or filter on their side. That number is theirs, is computed from their criteria, and has nothing to do with the one you saw here.
Optimise for the extraction, not for the score
The number is a tool for deciding where to spend an hour. What reaches the employer is the file and whatever their parser could get out of it.
Open Involve Resume