Affinda's Resume Parser: Your FAQs Answered

Here at Affinda, we are so proud of the product that started it all – our resume parser! The current edition is not quite the original product; in fact, we're three versions deep now. After fielding countless questions from both potential customers and loyal clients over the years, we thought we'd answer a few of the most popular ones here.

Who Are We?

Affinda was founded over 8 years ago by Ben Toner, an expert in machine learning, data science, and software development. He used this expertise to develop Affinda's flagship product – the resume parser.

Today, Affinda has transformed into a team of innovative thinkers who live and breathe AI transformation. Our work on our products is never complete; as technology rapidly evolves, by the time an update is launched, we’re already knees deep in work on the next iteration.

How Fast Is Affinda's Resume Parser?

We take a machine learning led approach to data extraction. Instead of focusing on being the fastest parser, it's far more important to us that our parsing is accurate. We have developed a parser that parses documents in 1 – 2 seconds with much more accurate results than many of our competitors. After all, the goal of a parser is to help the end user save time. What’s the benefit of a parser that extracts a CV slightly faster, if it adds several minutes of work to the user?

How Can I Start Using Affinda's Resume Parser?

If you want to give our resume parser a try to test its accuracy and speed, you can do that online without any annoying sign-up requirements! Simply head to https://www.affinda.com/resume-parser/, upload some resumes, and wait a couple of seconds to download the output.

Why Is Affinda So Affordable?

It’s normal to assume that an affordable product must be worse, but in the world of resume parsing, it’s different. Companies worldwide are being overcharged for  outdated legacy products, something that is all too common in the software industry..We aim to compete on both quality and cost. How do we do it?

1. We don't have legacy deadweight weighing us down. We developed a product that beat our competitors in testing after our business had been running for only 18 months. Being a young company,, we don’t have a bloated code base to maintain, so our operating costs are lower.
2. We are not just a resume parsing business. Instead, we have many income streams across our various AI-based products. This allows us to provide more cost-effective services that are still of high quality.

Is the Resume Parser Template Based?

Affinda's resume parser is not template-based, and for good reason. Traditionally, resume parsers are built based on templates. Essentially, this type of software reads a resume and tries to match its various sections to an existing template formula.

But, it consistently occurs that when someone puts their resume information in a slightly different format, template-based parsing can't understand and may miscategorise the data.

Instead of templates, Affinda uses artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) to read resumes. Our AI has been trained on millions of resumes to output the most accurate data possible.

Affinda is proud to take a technology-first approach with all of our products. Technology is evolving increasingly rapidly, and we love taking the chance to regularly improve our existing software.

How Does A Resume Parser Work?

In the same way that a human works to read a document, our resume parser has been built to recognise visual cues and text. These cues can be used to locate and label the relevant parts of a resume.

The API runs through deep learning models and extracts every bit of relevant data from each resume in the sytem. The unstructured data in your raw resumes is transformed to structured data that both computers and people can understand. Once it has extracted the data, the API summarizes it in in JSON format so that it's easily read by your ATS. If you use our online service, it can also be converted into an XLS file for you to review in Excel.

What is NLP (Natural Language Processing)?

Natural Language Processing is a term used to describe how software works to understand the semantics behind written text.

Think about it like this – we can train computers to do anything that people can do. As children, we learn first to detect patterns. Then we are taught our ABCs and begin to recognise those shapes. Finally, we put it all together and learn to read words and then sentences.

Computers can learn to read data in much the same way, taking context into account and gaining meaning from text. The software has evolved to recognise patterns and sort text that follows certain rules into various categories. As more and more data is parsed, computers learn to identify patterns more and more accurately over time.

Just like us, computers learn to read and then read to learn.

Can I Integrate the Resume Parser With My Existing ATS?

Yes, you can integrate the Affinda resume parser with your ATS! All you need is our API and a developer to work their magic.

Our documentation is written by developers for developers, so it'll be easy for your technical experts to follow. We use REST API as this is most widely used worldwide, and we offer a range of client libraries.

One client said:

"We've had a chance as an organisation to try some of the other parsers out there, and this API based integration return reliable results for every format we sent at them. The communication from their team was above and beyond traditional customer experiences."

How Does Your Pricing Model Work?

Affinda's pricing model works particularly well for clients with fluctuating volumes of resumes. Many of our competitors charge a fixed monthly price for a specified number of resumes, but we understand that you may have a thousand resumes some months while only processing a couple of hundred the next.

That's why we offer yearly pricing. Paying annually for a number of CVs allows those fluctuations to balance out across the year without any extra charges.

As you have a longer time to use up your purchased credits, you'll find that we're 30 – 40% cheaper than many of our competitors.

How Do You Handle Data/Security?

The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is one of the most thorough privacy and security laws globally,  and this is the one we have chosen to follow for all of our processes. This law, passed by the EU, means that we use the highest level of security and encryption on our hosted services. But that's not all – we also encrypt data while it's in transit and at rest to ensure that third parties cannot access it.

If your region has specific additional security requirements, we are ready to research and adapt our processes to meet those as well.

My Current Parser Is Okay – Why Would I Switch?

If you're happy with fine, that's… fine. If you want excellent parsing, you need Affinda.

Customers often find that we offer more accurate results at a cheaper rate than their current provider. Why pay more to get a lower quality product?

Remember that you are welcome to thoroughly test out the product before making any commitment – in fact, we strongly recommend it.  Contact us today for a free API key.

I've Already Renewed With My Current Parsing Provider – How Can I Switch To Affinda?

Technology changes so quickly that if you're with a provider who doesn't update their tech, yours will likely be outdated by the time your contract ends. Start testing out our resume parser now so that you're ready to make the switch at the end of your contract.

We recommend testing a minimum of 100 resumes in various formats and file types to get a feel for the software. This will be a good demonstration of its abilities.

Our flexible payment options can help you to transition out of your contract. Leave us a note if you'd like to find out more about switching to Affinda.

Is your FAQ not on this list? We’d love to answer it! Contact us today; we’re always thrilled to chat about our favourite products.