Is Your Resume ATS-Friendly? The 10-Point Checklist

Most mid-size and large employers run applications through an applicant tracking system (ATS) before a human sees them. The system extracts your text into a database; if the extraction garbles, your qualifications never get read. The frustrating part: rejections for formatting look identical to rejections for fit, so people keep polishing the wrong thing.

Run your resume against these ten checks. They're the same ones we test mechanically when we build resume templates.

The checklist

1. One column. Multi-column layouts scramble read order in many parsers — text from column two gets interleaved mid-sentence into column one.
2. No tables. Even invisible layout tables. Parsers walk table cells in unpredictable order.
3. No text boxes or graphics. Text inside a text box is often skipped entirely. Skill bars and icons read as nothing.
4. Contact info in the body, not the header/footer. Several major systems don't parse header regions — that's a silent way to lose your phone number.
5. Standard section names. "Professional Experience", "Education", "Skills". A clever heading like "Where I've Made an Impact" may not map to anything.
6. Standard font. Calibri, Arial, Georgia. Downloaded display fonts can render as fallback glyphs after conversion.
7. Consistent date format. "Mar 2021 – Present" on every role. Parsers compute your tenure; inconsistency breaks it.
8. Real bullet characters. Use the word processor's list feature, not pasted symbols (➤, ✦) that can extract as junk bytes.
9. Match the posting's exact keywords. "P&L ownership" and "budget management" are different strings to a filter. Mirror their wording where it's true of you.
10. Send the format they ask for. If the posting says PDF, send PDF; if .docx, send .docx. When unspecified, PDF preserves your formatting.

The quick self-test

Select-all and copy your resume, then paste it into a plain text editor. What you see is roughly what an ATS sees. If lines interleave, sections vanish, or symbols turn to garbage — that's what the employer's database contains.