Free ATS resume checker

Scan your resume for ATS compatibility issues in seconds. See your ATS score, get specific fixes, and make sure your resume actually reaches a human. No signup required.

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How ATS resume parsing actually works

An ATS resume checker scans your document for the same parsing issues that cause applicant tracking systems to misread or silently reject your application. Understanding how ATS parsing works is the first step to fixing compatibility problems. When you submit a resume through a company's careers page, the ATS does not display your document as you formatted it. Instead, it runs a parsing algorithm that converts your file into structured data — extracting your name, contact information, work history, education, and skills into separate database fields.

This parsing process relies on header detection, section identification, and text extraction. The ATS looks for recognized section headers like "Experience" or "Education" to determine where one section ends and another begins. Within each section, it attempts to extract dates, job titles, company names, and bullet point content. When this parsing succeeds, your resume appears correctly in the recruiter's view. When it fails, your information is scrambled, incomplete, or missing entirely.

How ATS header detection and section identification work

ATS parsers use a dictionary of recognized section headers to identify the structure of your resume. Standard headers that all major ATS platforms recognize include Experience, Work Experience, Education, Skills, Summary, Professional Summary, Certifications, and Projects. When the ATS encounters one of these headers, it creates a new section and assigns all following content to that category until it finds the next header.

Problems arise when you use creative or non-standard headers. "Where I've Made an Impact" will not be recognized as an Experience section by most ATS platforms. "My Toolkit" will not be mapped to Skills. The ATS either lumps that content into the previous section or creates an "Other" category that recruiters rarely check. Our ATS resume checker flags non-standard headers and suggests the standard alternative.

Formatting that breaks ATS parsing

Certain resume formatting elements consistently cause ATS parsing failures across all major platforms. Here is a comprehensive list of what to avoid:

  1. Multi-column layouts: ATS parsers read content in a single linear flow. Two or three column layouts cause the parser to read across columns, mixing content from your sidebar with your main experience section. A skills section in the left column may be interleaved with job descriptions from the right column.
  2. Tables: Even invisible tables used for layout confuse ATS parsers. Content in table cells may be extracted in the wrong order, split across sections, or ignored entirely. This includes the common practice of using a table to align dates with job titles.
  3. Text boxes: Content inside text boxes is frequently invisible to ATS parsers. If your name, contact information, or summary is in a text box, the ATS may not extract it at all.
  4. Headers and footers: Many ATS platforms skip document headers and footers entirely during parsing. If your contact information lives in the page header, the ATS will not have your email or phone number. Always place contact details in the main document body.
  5. Embedded images: Skill bar graphics, company logos, headshots, and decorative icons are invisible to ATS parsers. If you represent your skill proficiency with a visual bar instead of text, the ATS sees nothing for that skill.
  6. Non-standard fonts: Decorative fonts may not render correctly when the ATS processes your document. Stick with widely supported fonts: Arial, Calibri, Garamond, Georgia, Helvetica, or Times New Roman.
  7. Image-based PDFs: If your PDF is a scanned image rather than a text-layer document, the ATS cannot extract any text. You can test this by trying to select text in your PDF — if you cannot highlight individual words, neither can the ATS.

ATS quirks by platform: Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, iCIMS, Taleo

While the core ATS parsing issues are consistent across platforms, each system has specific quirks worth knowing. Greenhouse handles modern PDFs well but struggles with heavily formatted documents. Lever has a relatively forgiving parser but still fails on multi-column layouts. Workday is notoriously strict — it often requires a .docx format and has trouble with anything beyond the simplest formatting. iCIMS handles most standard formats but occasionally misparses dates in non-US formats. Taleo (Oracle) is the strictest of all and is common in enterprise and government organizations — it demands plain, single-column documents with standard section headers.

What an ATS-friendly resume structure looks like

The ideal ATS-friendly resume follows a simple, predictable structure that any parser can handle correctly:

If you want to automatically fix every ATS issue our resume checker finds and tailor your resume to a specific job, try Turquoise for free.

Questions

ATS systems convert your resume document into structured data by identifying sections (Experience, Education, Skills), extracting text content, and mapping it to database fields. They use header detection algorithms to find section boundaries, then parse the content within each section for dates, job titles, company names, and keywords.

The most common formatting that breaks ATS parsing includes multi-column layouts, tables, text boxes, embedded images and graphics, headers and footers containing critical information, non-standard fonts, and creative section headers. These elements either confuse the parser or make content invisible to the system.

Both work, but with caveats. A text-layer PDF (created from Word or a text editor) is parsed well by modern ATS platforms. A scanned or image-based PDF will fail completely because the ATS cannot extract text. Word documents (.docx) are universally supported. When in doubt, submit a .docx file.

Use standard section headers that ATS systems recognize: Experience or Work Experience, Education, Skills, Summary or Professional Summary, Certifications, and Projects. Avoid creative headers like "Where I've Made an Impact" or "My Toolkit" — ATS parsers may not recognize them as standard sections.

Our checker evaluates your resume against the parsing standards common to all major ATS platforms including Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, iCIMS, Taleo, and BambooHR. While each system has minor quirks, the core parsing issues are consistent across platforms — if your resume passes our check, it will parse correctly on the vast majority of ATS systems.