Most mid-size and large companies now use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to collect and filter resumes before a recruiter ever sees them. Studies consistently show that over 70% of resumes are rejected by ATS software before a human reviews them — not because the candidate was underqualified, but because the resume wasn't formatted in a way the software could parse correctly.
The frustrating part is that this is entirely fixable. ATS systems are rule-based, not intelligent — they look for specific patterns, and once you know what those patterns are, you can optimize your resume to pass through cleanly. This guide covers every major check, with real examples of what passes and what fails.
1. Use standard section headings
ATS software looks for specific heading names to categorize your resume. Common ones include 'Work Experience,' 'Education,' 'Skills,' 'Summary,' and 'Certifications.' If you use creative alternatives, the system may not recognize the section at all.
Example that fails: 'Where I've Been' instead of 'Work Experience' — a human reader understands this immediately, but most ATS parsers don't.
Example that passes: 'Work Experience,' 'Professional Experience,' or 'Employment History' — all of these are standard enough to parse reliably.
The safest approach is to use the most common heading for each section. Don't try to stand out with your section titles. Save creativity for your bullet points.
2. Avoid tables, text boxes, and multi-column layouts
This is one of the most common ATS failures we see. Multi-column resumes look polished in a PDF viewer, but many ATS parsers read documents left to right, top to bottom — which means a two-column layout can get completely scrambled.
A common failure mode: the left column contains your job titles and companies, and the right column contains your dates. The ATS reads all the left column first, then all the right column — so it sees 'Software Engineer, Google, Product Manager, Meta, 2019–2021, 2021–2023' as a jumbled mess, with no way to connect which dates belong to which role.
Text boxes are even worse — most ATS parsers skip them entirely. If your contact information or a key skills section is inside a text box, it may never be extracted.
The fix is simple: use a single-column layout. Yes, it looks more basic. But 'basic' passes ATS, and a recruiter who actually sees your resume can appreciate the content.
3. Put contact information in the document body
Many resume templates put your name, phone, and email in the document's header region. This looks great in Microsoft Word, but some ATS parsers skip header and footer regions entirely — which means a recruiter might receive your resume with no way to contact you.
The fix: copy your contact information out of the header/footer and paste it as regular body text at the top of the first page. You can still style it to look like a header — it just needs to be real document body text, not a Word header section.
4. Save as a text-based PDF or DOCX
A scanned image of your resume, or a PDF exported from a design tool like Canva or Adobe Illustrator as a flattened image, contains no extractable text. If an ATS can't extract text, it can't parse your resume at all — it typically shows up as a blank submission.
How to check: open your PDF and try to highlight and copy a sentence. If you can select and copy the text normally, it's text-based. If nothing highlights, it's an image-based PDF and no ATS can read it.
DOCX is generally the safest format for maximum ATS compatibility. Modern ATS platforms like Workday, Greenhouse, and Lever handle text-based PDFs well, but older or smaller systems may struggle. If you're unsure, DOCX is the safer bet.
5. Spell out acronyms at least once
If the job description says 'Search Engine Optimization (SEO)' and your resume only says 'SEO,' some ATS keyword matching algorithms miss the connection. The safest approach is to spell out any acronym in full the first time it appears, then use the short form after.
This matters most for: certifications (AWS Certified Solutions Architect, not just 'AWS certified'), tools (Customer Relationship Management software, not just 'CRM'), and methodologies (Agile Software Development, not just 'Agile').
6. Use standard bullet characters
Stick to simple bullets: a solid round dot (•), a dash (-), or an asterisk (*). Decorative bullets, custom icon fonts, emoji, or special Unicode characters can render as broken symbols or get stripped out entirely during parsing.
This is especially common with Canva resumes that use decorative bullet styles — what looks like a stylish checkmark in Canva becomes a string of nonsense characters when an ATS extracts the text.
7. List dates consistently throughout
Use a consistent date format for every role and every educational entry. Pick one style and stick to it: 'Jan 2023 – Mar 2025,' '01/2023 – 03/2025,' or just 'January 2023 – March 2025.' Mixing formats makes it harder for ATS systems and recruiters to build a clear timeline.
Also: never omit dates entirely to hide a gap. This actually causes more problems than the gap itself — ATS systems often can't correctly categorize undated entries, and recruiters notice missing dates immediately.
8. Match keywords from the job description
Many ATS platforms rank or filter resumes based on keyword overlap with the job posting. If the listing asks for 'project management' and your resume says 'managed projects,' those may not match — ATS matching is often literal, not semantic.
The process: read the job description carefully, identify the specific skills, tools, and phrases that appear most often, and make sure those exact terms appear somewhere in your resume — in a context that's true and natural.
Don't keyword-stuff. Repeating the same term 15 times looks manipulative to both ATS ranking systems and human reviewers who scan the document afterward.
9. Name your file professionally
'Resume_Final_v3_ACTUALLY_FINAL_edited.pdf' is not a great look, and some ATS systems do log the filename. Use something clean: 'FirstName-LastName-Resume.pdf' or 'FirstName-LastName-SoftwareEngineer.pdf' if the role is specific.
Common mistakes we see most often
Based on thousands of resume scans, these are the issues that show up most frequently:
- ✓ Contact information placed in a Word document header (invisible to many parsers)
- ✓ Two-column layout that scrambles when read left-to-right
- ✓ Resume exported as an image from Canva or Figma with no extractable text
- ✓ All experience bullets starting with 'Responsible for' instead of an action verb
- ✓ Section headings like 'My Journey' or 'What I've Done' instead of standard labels
- ✓ Inconsistent date formats across different roles
- ✓ File named 'Resume.pdf' with no identifying information
Frequently asked questions
Does every company use ATS? Not every company — very small businesses and startups often review resumes manually. But any company using applicant tracking at scale (most businesses with more than 50 employees) almost certainly does.
Will ATS automatically reject my resume? Usually not — more commonly, ATS systems sort and rank resumes rather than outright rejecting them. A low-scoring resume may simply appear at the bottom of a list, where it's unlikely to get reviewed.
Does ATS check for gaps in employment? The software itself doesn't penalize gaps. But inconsistent or missing dates make your timeline hard to parse, which can cause other problems.
How often should I update my resume? Update it whenever you complete a significant project, change roles, or learn a new skill. Don't wait until you're actively job-hunting — it's much harder to remember details six months later.
The fastest way to check for most of these issues at once: upload your resume to our free ATS checker — it runs through all of these checks automatically and gives you a score with specific fixes.