Pare: Summarizing Resumes on Any ATS

The Hiring Challenge

In 2024, I embarked on a project to tackle inefficiencies in the recruiting industry, a journey inspired by my experience with the Waterloo Co-op program. My first co-op was at an AI company called ada, and while the opportunity was exciting, the hiring process itself was frustratingly arduous. Securing the position required significant effort, and the lack of feedback or even rejection emails while applying to other jobs left me feeling like my resume was getting lost in the void.

At first, I blamed recruiters, assuming they weren't reviewing resumes properly. However, after speaking with several recruiters, I realized the problem wasn't them - it was the sheer volume of applications they had to process daily. Some recruiters I spoke to had thousands of resumes to sift through, often spending only 5-10 seconds per resume. Given these constraints, it became clear that recruiters simply didn't have the bandwidth to provide personalized responses to every applicant.

This insight led me to ask: Could technology streamline this process and help recruiters make better decisions, faster? That's when I built Pare, a resume summarization tool designed to make the recruiting process more efficient.

Introducing Pare: A Resume Summarizer for ATS Platforms

Pare is a browser extension that integrates with any Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to help recruiters process resumes faster. For those unfamiliar, an ATS is the software recruiters use to track applicants, manage job postings, and oversee hiring pipelines - it's like CRM software but tailored for recruiting.

Since recruiters only have a few seconds to assess a resume, I saw an opportunity to reduce cognitive load by providing structured, AI-generated summaries. The goal was simple: help recruiters get to the essence of a candidate's experience in a fraction of the time.

The Technical Approach

Building Pare came with significant technical challenges. The primary complexity lay in making the extension work seamlessly across multiple ATS platforms, each with its own data structures and UI implementations. Some ATS platforms rely on React components, others use HTML pop-ups, and some simply display plain text.

Here's how Pare works:

• Resume Extraction: Pare uses PDF.js to extract the text from resumes displayed in ATS platforms.

• AI-Powered Summarization: The extracted resume text is then fed into OpenAI's GPT model with structured prompting to generate a concise, recruiter-friendly summary.

• Dynamic Integration: The extension identifies different ATS architectures and adapts accordingly to display the summarized resume in the appropriate section of the UI.

Overcoming Edge Cases

A key challenge in developing Pare was ensuring its functionality across different ATS platforms. Some ATS systems store resume data in embedded JavaScript objects, while others use dynamically generated iframes. To address these variations, Pare includes:

• DOM Inspection and Adaptation: The extension dynamically detects how the ATS renders resumes and adapts its extraction process accordingly.

• Asynchronous Handling: Since ATS platforms load data asynchronously, Pare waits for DOM elements to fully render before extracting content, preventing errors from incomplete data.

• Cross-Origin Requests: Some ATS platforms restrict direct access to resume content, requiring workarounds like injecting scripts into the page context to retrieve the necessary data.

Adoption and Impact

Since launching Pare, several recruiters - many of whom I connected with during the development process - have started using it. A few of my friends running startups with high hiring volumes have also adopted it to streamline their recruiting workflows.

The extension is available on GitHub, where users can configure it with their own OpenAI API key and install it as an unpacked Chrome extension via Developer Tools. By reducing the time recruiters spend reading resumes, Pare helps them focus on identifying the best candidates rather than drowning in an overwhelming sea of applications.

What's Next?

Pare is just the beginning. There are still many inefficiencies in the hiring process that can be optimized with AI-driven tools. Future iterations of Pare could incorporate:

• Customizable Summarization Styles: Allowing recruiters to tweak summary formats based on industry-specific needs.

• Multi-Resume Comparisons: Automatically highlighting key differentiators between candidates.

• Integration with More ATS Platforms: Expanding native support for widely used recruiting systems.

At its core, Pare is about making hiring more efficient - both for recruiters and job seekers. By leveraging AI to handle tedious, high-volume tasks, recruiters can spend more time on what truly matters: connecting great candidates with great opportunities.