The ATS resume guide

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is software employers use to collect applications, store resumes, and help recruiters search, filter and move candidates through a hiring process. Most systems extract the text from your resume and organise it into fields such as name, contact details, work history, education and skills.

Two things follow from that. First, your resume has to be readable by software: if text cannot be extracted, or comes out in the wrong order, the information a recruiter searches for may not be where they expect it. Second, your resume has to be relevant to a person: recruiters still read what the system shows them.

Employers use many different systems, configured differently. Whether any automated filtering happens, and how, is the employer’s choice. No tool — ATSCheck included — can tell you exactly how a particular employer’s system will treat your application.

• Use DOCX or a text-based PDF. Both are widely accepted. Follow the employer’s instructions if they ask for a specific format.
• Avoid scanned or image-only PDFs. A photo or scan of a page contains pictures of letters, not text.
• Test it. Open your PDF and try to select and copy a paragraph into a plain text editor. If the text does not copy, or copies in a jumbled order, software will have the same problem.
• Give the file a plain name, such as firstname-lastname-resume.pdf.

Design choices that look good to a person can confuse text extraction:

• Multiple columns may be read across the page rather than down each column, mixing sentences together. A single column is the safest choice.
• Tables and text boxes are sometimes skipped or extracted out of order.
• Headers and footers are ignored by some parsers. Put your name and contact details in the main body of the page.
• Icons, charts and skill bars carry no readable text. A five-star rating for “Python” tells software nothing; a sentence about what you built with Python does.
• Unusual fonts and symbols can extract as the wrong characters. Standard fonts and simple bullet points are reliable.

Parsers look for common headings to decide what each part of your resume is. Conventional names work best: Experience or Work experience, Education, Skills, Certifications, Projects. Creative headings such as “Where I’ve made an impact” are harder to classify.

• Use one date format throughout, for example “Mar 2022 – Present” or “03/2022 – Present”.
• Put the job title, employer and dates for each role together, in the same order every time.
• Use your real job title. If it was unusual, you can add a common equivalent in brackets, as long as it is accurate.

A list of skills tells a reader what you claim; a line of experience shows what you did. Both are useful, but evidence is more convincing — to recruiters and to any tool that reads context rather than counting words.

• Listed only: “Skills: PostgreSQL”
• Evidenced: “Maintained PostgreSQL schemas and tuned slow queries for the orders service.”

Where you can, name the tool, what you did with it, and the result. Only include a number if you know it to be true.

1. Read the job description and note each requirement, separating what is required from what is preferred.
2. For each requirement, find the line in your resume that shows it. If there is none, ask whether you have relevant experience you have not described.
3. Where the employer uses a different term for something you genuinely did, it is reasonable to use their term — accurately.
4. Move your most relevant experience higher, and cut detail that does not help for this role.

Do not copy the job description into your resume, add skills you do not have, or hide keywords in white or tiny text. Hidden text is visible to software and to anyone who copies your resume, and misrepresenting your experience can end a hiring process — or a job — later on.

• Name, email address and phone number at the top of the main body, as plain text.
• A location at the level the role needs, such as city and country. A full street address is rarely necessary.
• A LinkedIn or portfolio URL written out in full if it is relevant.
• Personal details such as date of birth, photo, marital status or nationality are usually unnecessary and not relevant to the job.

There is no universal page limit. One to two pages suits most roles; senior, academic and technical roles can justify more. What matters is that every line earns its place. Avoid repeating the same phrases, and prefer short, specific bullet points that start with what you did.

• “There is one ATS score employers see.” No. Scores from resume-checking tools, including ATSCheck, are each tool’s own measure. Employers’ systems work differently.
• “You need a perfect score to get an interview.” No. A higher score means fewer readability issues or stronger evidence against the job description, not a guaranteed outcome.
• “More keywords always help.” Repetition without evidence makes a resume harder to read and can look like keyword stuffing.
• “PDFs never work.” Text-based PDFs are widely readable. Image-only PDFs are the problem.

• The file is DOCX or a text-based PDF, and text copies out cleanly and in order.
• Contact details are in the body of the page, not only in a header or footer.
• Section headings are conventional.
• Each role has a title, employer and dates in a consistent format.
• Each required requirement in the job description is supported by a specific line — or you have decided it does not apply.
• Skills appear in your experience, not only in a list.
• Everything is true, and you could talk about any line in an interview.

ATSCheck checks common ATS compatibility factors — text extraction, layout, sections, contact details and content clarity — and compares your resume with the requirements in a job description, showing the evidence it found for each one and where no evidence was found in the supplied resume. It suggests truthful improvements, prioritised for the role.

It is an independent analysis, not a copy of any employer’s system, and it cannot guarantee interviews. See how the resume checker works.