Resume Forge: A Dynamic Web-Based Resume Builder with Integrated ATS Compatibility Scoring and Real-Time Preview

Abstract

In today's fiercely competitive employment landscape, the quality and ATS-compatibility of a resume decisively influence a candidate's prospects of reaching the interview stage. Traditional resume creation methods — desktop word processors, cloud-based builders requiring registration, and LaTeX-based typesetting systems — impose significant friction: manual formatting overhead, lack of real-time visual feedback, privacy concerns from server-side data storage, and an almost universal absence of integrated Applicant Tracking System (ATS) evaluation. Over 90% of Fortune 500 companies deploy ATS software that automatically screens and ranks submitted resumes before any human review occurs, yet no freely available, privacy-respecting tool provides job seekers with actionable ATS feedback during the drafting process.
This paper presents ResumeForge, a fully client-side single-page application (SPA) engineered using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript ES6, Bootstrap 5.3.0, and html2pdf.js. The system features a split-panel interface — a dark-themed form editor paired with a live A4-sized resume preview — enabling instantaneous visual feedback. Seven comprehensively structured resume sections (Personal Information, Work Experience, Education, Skills, Projects, Certifications, and Awards) are supported with full CRUD operations. Three professionally designed templates (Professional, Modern, Minimal/Creative) permit one-click switching without data loss. A checklist-based ATS scoring engine evaluates resumes on a weighted 100-point scale across five categories, providing color-coded feedback and percentile classification. A keyword matching algorithm performs real-time comparison of resume content against any pasted job description. All data processing occurs locally within the browser — zero server communication, zero registration, zero cost — ensuring absolute data privacy. Experimental evaluation demonstrates sub-100ms live preview update latency, 100% test pass rate across 20 structured test cases, and cross-browser compatibility on Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.