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ATS Resume Checker

Upload your resume and see the literal text an applicant tracking system extracts, then fix what it got wrong. No sign-up, nothing uploaded.

Private · on device. Runs in your browser: your file is not uploaded. No sign-up.

PDF · nothing is uploaded
Your resume is not uploaded. It is read in this browser tab and never sent anywhere, no account, no email address, no copy kept. Worth caring about: a resume is a complete identity document, listing your name, contact details, employer history and address, and most "free resume scanners" keep it.

The rejection nobody tells you about

You apply for a role you are well qualified for. You hear nothing. You assume the market is brutal, or that someone better applied, and you move on.

Sometimes that is what happened. Often something duller did: your resume was parsed into a database, the parse went wrong, and the record it produced no longer showed the experience you actually have. When the recruiter searched for the skills they needed, you were not in the results. Nobody rejected you. You were never on the list to be rejected from.

The reason this persists is that you cannot see it happen. Your resume looks perfect on your screen. There is no error, no bounce, no feedback of any kind. This tool exists to make that invisible step visible: it shows you the literal text the software extracts, so you can judge for yourself whether it still represents you.

Why the two-column layout is the biggest single problem

A PDF does not contain columns. It contains instructions to draw characters at coordinates. The "column" you see is an arrangement of positions, and nothing in the file records that the left side should be read before the right.

So a parser does the obvious thing: it groups text by vertical position and reads across. On a single-column resume that is exactly right. On a two-column resume, the left and right columns share their baselines, and the parser produces this:

EXPERIENCE                    SKILLS
Senior Analyst, Northwind     SQL and query optimisation
Mar 2021 – Jun 2024           Python for data pipelines
Led the reporting migration   Tableau dashboard design

…read as this:

EXPERIENCE SKILLS
Senior Analyst, Northwind SQL and query optimisation
Mar 2021 – Jun 2024 Python for data pipelines
Led the reporting migration Tableau dashboard design

Every line is now a job title fused to an unrelated skill. Your employment history is gone as a structure. A search for "Senior Analyst" may still hit, but the dates no longer attach to the role, and the skills no longer attach to anything. Choose your resume above and the tool will show you your own version of this, if it applies.

The five things a parser tries to extract

An ATS is not reading your resume for meaning. It is filling in fields. Those fields are what recruiters later search, so anything the parser cannot fill is, for practical purposes, not on your resume at all.

FieldWhat breaks it
Contact detailsEmail in a header or footer, or inside an image or icon
Work historyColumns, tables, or roles laid out as graphics
Employment datesTimeline graphics, bars, or dates only in a sidebar
EducationA heading the parser does not recognise as education
SkillsSkills shown only as rating bars or star icons, with no text

Note the pattern: every one of these is a design decision that reads beautifully to a person. The resumes that break are rarely the lazy ones. They are the carefully made ones.

Skill rating bars deserve their own warning

Five dots, four filled, next to the word "Python". It looks considered. To a parser it is the word Python and some decoration, the rating carries no text, so it carries no information.

That is the harmless case. The damaging one is a skills section that is only bars, where the proficiency is the whole message. Then a recruiter searching for a skill you genuinely have will not find you, because the only evidence of it was a picture. Write it out instead: "Python, four years, data pipelines and analysis" says more, and survives.

What this tool will not tell you

It will not tell you whether your resume is any good. It measures machine readability, which is a floor and not a ceiling, clearing it means a person now gets the chance to judge you properly.

It also cannot tell you which ATS a given employer uses, and they differ. Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Taleo and iCIMS all parse differently and all have improved over time. The checks here are the ones that hold across every system, because they are about whether the text can be recovered at all, not about the quirks of any one product.

And it will not give you a "97% match" against a job. Any tool that does is inventing a number. What it will show you is which of the posting's own terms are missing from your resume, which is a fact you can act on.

Once the parsing is clean, the keyword matcher is the next step, and the guide on ATS-friendly formatting covers every rule with the reason behind it, so you can judge the cases this tool does not cover.

Frequently asked questions

What does this actually check?

It extracts the text of your resume twice. Once the way an applicant tracking system does, walking the page in baseline order and concatenating, and once the way you read it, column by column. Then it compares them. If the two readings differ, your layout scrambles when parsed, and the tool shows you both so you can see exactly what the recruiter's database receives. It also checks the things an ATS builds a candidate record from: email, phone, section headings and employment dates.

Why do two-column resumes break?

Because a PDF stores text at coordinates, with no notion of a column. The left and right columns share their baselines, so a parser reading in baseline order takes a line of the left column, then the line of the right column beside it, and joins them. Your job title welds onto a skill from the sidebar. Repeat down the page and the result is unreadable, to software, though not to you, which is why the problem is so easy to miss.

Is a score of 100 a guarantee of an interview?

No, and be sceptical of any tool implying otherwise. This measures whether the software can read your resume, a floor, not a ceiling. Passing means a human now gets the chance to reject you on the merits. That is genuinely worth having, because a parsing failure removes you before anyone forms a view at all, but it is not the same as being a strong candidate.

Do ATS systems really auto-reject people?

Mostly not in the way the internet suggests. The common myth is a robot scoring you and binning you below a threshold. What usually happens is duller and just as damaging: your resume is parsed into fields, a recruiter searches those fields for the skills they need, and you either appear in the results or you do not. Nobody rejected you, you were never in the list. That is why parsing failures matter more than scores.

Should I send a PDF or a Word document?

A PDF exported from a word processor is fine, and usually better because it renders identically everywhere. A PDF that is a scan, a photograph or a flattened design export is invisible to a parser and this tool will tell you so. The one situation where .docx genuinely wins is an older ATS that handles Word better, and a few still do. Never send an image, whatever the wrapper.

Why does the keyword match sometimes look harsh?

Because it looks for the term as written, not what it implies. If the posting says "stakeholder management" and your resume says "worked closely with senior leadership", it counts as missing, and so it would in a recruiter's keyword search, which is the point. Add the posting's own words where they are honestly true of you.

Is my resume uploaded?

No. Everything runs in this browser tab; the file never leaves your device, and there is no account, no email capture and no stored copy. This matters more here than for most tools, a resume contains your full name, contact details, address history and career record in one document, which makes it one of the more sensitive files you own.

It says my resume has no text at all. What went wrong?

Your PDF is an image. Either it was scanned, photographed, or exported from a design tool in a way that flattened the text into a picture. It will look perfect to you and be completely blank to the software. Export a fresh PDF from Word, Google Docs or Pages, and check by trying to select a sentence with your mouse. If you cannot highlight individual words, neither can the parser.