What this checks and why
No tool can replicate every applicant tracking system. Products differ, employers configure them differently, and none of them publish how they rank candidates. So instead of guessing at a hidden score, this checker runs a short list of heuristics drawn from widely published résumé guidance, and tells you exactly what each one looks for.
Each check has a weight. A pass earns its full points, a warning earns half, a fail earns none, and the score is the share of possible points you earned. The weights add up to 100 with a job description. Without one, the keyword check is left out and the score is worked out over the remaining checks, so skipping it never costs you.
Contact details
15 ptsLooks for: An email address and a phone number anywhere in the text.
Why: Recruiters need a way to reach you, and parsers try to pull these into the candidate record. If either is missing from the text, it may be sitting in a header, footer or image that didn't come through.
Standard section headings
15 ptsLooks for: Lines that read as Experience, Education and Skills, including common variants such as Work History or Technical Skills.
Why: Parsers and recruiters both look for familiar section names to find your jobs, degrees and skills. Creative headings like "My Journey" are easy to misread.
Dates and date format
10 ptsLooks for: Years in your experience and education, and whether month-level dates use one format (for example all "Jan 2021" or all "01/2021").
Why: Dates let a reader, and a parser, work out how long you held each role. One consistent format is easier to read and less likely to be split or misread.
Bullets that start with action verbs
10 ptsLooks for: Bullet lines, and how many of them open with a verb such as Led, Built or Reduced (or another past-tense verb).
Why: Short bullets that lead with what you did are faster to skim than paragraphs. This is reading guidance for humans more than a parsing rule.
Quantified results
10 ptsLooks for: Bullets or lines that contain a number, percentage or amount, not counting dates.
Why: Numbers show scale and outcome ("cut reporting time by 6 hours a week"). They are one of the most common pieces of résumé advice from recruiters.
Length
10 ptsLooks for: Total word count. 350 to 1,000 words passes; outside that range gets a warning or a fail.
Why: That range roughly covers a full one-page or two-page résumé. Much shorter often means missing detail; much longer is hard to skim. It is a rule of thumb, not a limit any system enforces.
Table or column hints
10 ptsLooks for: Lines that contain tab characters or long runs of spaces between words, which often come from tables, text boxes or two-column layouts.
Why: Some parsers read multi-column layouts across the columns instead of down them, mixing up lines. Plain text can only hint at this, so treat it as a prompt to check your file.
Emoji and unusual characters
5 ptsLooks for: Emoji, icon-font symbols (private-use characters) and the replacement character that appears when text failed to copy.
Why: Icons for phone or email often come through as blank boxes or nothing at all, and the information next to them can be lost with them.
First-person pronouns
5 ptsLooks for: The words I, me, my and myself.
Why: Résumé convention drops the pronoun ("Led the team", not "I led the team"). It's a style point that keeps bullets short, not a parsing issue.
Keyword match with the job
10 ptsLooks for: Only runs if you paste a job description. Uses the same matching as our keyword checker to see how many of the posting's important terms appear in your résumé.
Why: Recruiters often search their system by skill or tool, then skim for the posting's language. Matching the true ones in the posting's own words helps them see your fit.
What it can't check
It only sees the text you paste. It can't see fonts, colors, images, headers and footers, or how your file is built, and it can't judge whether your experience fits the role. A layout problem can show up indirectly, as missing contact details or jumbled lines, which is why the checks flag those. The length range (350 to 1,000 words) is a rule of thumb for one or two pages, not a limit any system enforces. And the popular claim that tracking software rejects most résumés before a human sees them has no published study behind it. Read our breakdown of the ATS rejection myth.
Next steps
- Want a closer look at keywords for one posting? Use the free résumé keyword checker, which lists every matched and missing term.
- Starting over on layout? Pick one of our ATS-friendly résumé templates: single column, plain headings, no tables.
- Ready to aim at a specific job? See how to tailor your résumé to a job description without inventing anything.