Free ATS resume checker

15 checks in three groups, in the order a resume gets read:

• Can an ATS read it? Real text, not a scan. A simple layout. Contact details. Standard section headings. Dates on every job.
• What recruiters look for: a summary that says who you are, a skills section, clear job titles, one or two pages, and no photo or personal details.
• What your experience shows: numbers in your bullets, results rather than duties, skills shown in your jobs and not only listed, bullets you can skim, and no typos.

Most checks are exact rules run on your resume's text. An AI model reads your summary and bullets only where judgement is needed: whether a bullet is a result or a duty, how specific your summary is, skills worded differently, and typos. Every line it quotes is checked against your resume.

There is no standard ATS score. Each resume checker computes its own number, and the ATS your application goes to doesn't use it. A count is easier to act on: "passes 11 of 15 checks" points you to four checks, each with the line from your resume and what to change.

An applicant tracking system (ATS) stores applications and lets recruiters search and sort them. When you apply, it reads the text of your resume and fills in your profile: contact details, jobs, dates, education and skills. Recruiters then search those fields: in Jobscan's 2025 survey of 384 recruiters, 76% said they filter candidates by skills first.

Most ATSs don't reject resumes on their own. Greenhouse, a widely used one, says its matching "does not automatically advance or reject candidates." The claim that 75% of resumes are rejected by an ATS traces back to a 2012 vendor claim that never published data. What screens people out automatically are knockout questions, like work authorization or a required license.

What makes a parser miss things, from Greenhouse's own list and Textkernel's parser documentation, turned into steps:

1. Save it as a PDF from Word or Google Docs, not as a scan or a photo.
2. Use one column, without tables or text boxes.
3. Put your name, email, phone, and city and state at the top, in the page itself rather than in the header.
4. Use the usual headings: Summary, Experience, Education, Skills.
5. Give every job a start and end date, all in one format.
6. Write job titles in full: "Senior Account Executive", not "Sr. Acct Exec".

After the check, open "See what an ATS reads" to get the fields we could read from your PDF: your name and contact details, each job with its title and dates, your education and your skills. If a field is empty or wrong there, an ATS parser may get it wrong too, and the checks above say why.

In Ladders' 2018 eye-tracking study, recruiters spent more time on job titles than on anything else, and the resumes that did best opened with a short overview and used bulleted accomplishments. In a CareerBuilder and Harris Poll survey of 1,138 hiring managers, 77% called typos a dealbreaker and 34% a resume without measurable results. US employers also avoid asking for a photo or age: the EEOC says employers "should not ask for a photograph of an applicant."

A resume can pass every check and still not show what a particular job asks for. To see that, compare your resume to the job description: each requirement next to the line in your resume that covers it. When you're ready, JobOwl can tailor your resume to the job using only what's already in it. Sending a cover letter too? Check your cover letter against the same job.