ATS résumé checker

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is the software companies use to collect and manage applications: Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS, Taleo, SmartRecruiters and many others. When you apply, it parses your résumé into fields (name, contact details, job titles, employers, dates, education, skills) and stores them in a searchable profile.

Recruiters then search and filter those profiles, often by keywords from the job post, and read the ones that come up. Most rejections aren’t a robot “scoring you out”. They happen because the parser couldn’t read part of your résumé, or because a recruiter’s search didn’t find the words they were looking for.

What this checker looks at

• Contact: an email, a phone number and a professional link, near the top.
• Structure: standard headings (Experience, Education, Skills) that every parser recognises.
• Bullet quality: action verbs, measurable results and concise phrasing, which is what recruiters skim for.
• Length and language: enough substance without padding, no “I/my” in bullets, one date format.
• Job match: the must-have and nice-to-have terms from the job post, and which ones you’re missing.
• Country rules: photo, length, spelling and personal details for the market you’re applying in.

Formatting that parses cleanly

Keywords: mirror, don’t stuff

Use the job post’s exact wording for skills you really have, e.g. “PostgreSQL” rather than “SQL databases” if that’s what it says. Put important terms in your bullets, next to results, not just in a skills list. Hidden white text and keyword lists copied from the post don’t fool modern systems, and they fool recruiters even less.

Myths worth ignoring

• “75% of résumés are rejected by robots.” There’s no solid source for this. Most ATSs store and rank; people decide.
• “You need a 100% match score.” No one meets every requirement. Cover the must-haves you genuinely have.
• “PDFs can’t be read.” Text-based PDFs parse well in modern systems. Follow the employer’s instructions if they ask for DOCX.
• “Fancy templates get noticed.” They get noticed by humans, sometimes. They often get mangled by parsers first.

A 5-minute ATS check before every application

1. Paste the job post above and look at the missing must-have keywords.
2. Add the ones that are true for you, inside a real bullet.
3. Check your headings, dates and contact details.
4. Export a text-based PDF, then select all the text in it. If you can’t select it, neither can the ATS.
5. Name the file clearly: FirstName-LastName-Resume.pdf.

Is my data stored?

No. Pasted text is checked in your browser. Uploaded files are converted to text once on our server and discarded immediately. Read résumé format by country for local conventions, or browse résumé examples that already pass these checks.