Most candidates assume their resume is ATS-friendly because it 'looks professional.' That's not the test. The test is whether the parser can extract your name, work history, and skills cleanly. Run the free check, or self-audit against the 12-point checklist below.
Tables look clean to humans and shred parses. Use plain text rows with consistent date formatting instead.
Two-column resumes look modern and break parsing on most ATS systems. Single column is the safe default.
'Work Experience', 'Education', 'Skills' — not 'My Journey' or 'What I've Built.' ATS systems look for the standard labels.
Newest job at the top. Functional and skills-first formats confuse ATS parse logic.
Not a scanned image PDF. The text needs to be selectable. If you can't copy text out of your file, neither can the ATS.
Some parsers ignore content in document headers and footers. Keep contact info in the body of the document.
'Jan 2023 – Mar 2024' or '01/2023 – 03/2024' — pick one and use it everywhere. Mixed formats break employment-gap detection.
Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman, Helvetica. Decorative or web fonts may not embed correctly and degrade to fallbacks that break alignment.
Use the bullet character (•) or dash (-). Decorative shapes from Wingdings or icon fonts won't render across all parsers.
Logos, infographic skill bars, badge images — invisible to ATS. If a piece of information matters, it has to be selectable text.
'firstname-lastname-resume.pdf' parses cleaner than 'Resume Final v3 (2).pdf' — and recruiters will find it faster too.
The keywords from the job description need to appear naturally in your bullets — not crammed into a 'Skills' word salad.
Most resumes fail on 3–5 of these. The fixes are usually mechanical, not creative.
Catches the issues you'll miss self-auditing — especially parse-level problems that look fine to a human.
Iterate until the score is 80+. Then tailor for specific roles.
Run the same audit automatically with a 0–100 score.
Deeper diagnostic — see the parsed output the ATS extracts.
Score your resume against a specific posting.
Live tool with the full report UI.
Once ATS-friendly, tailor for individual roles.
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