Check how an ATS reads your resume

What this checker actually measures

An applicant tracking system stores applications and helps recruiters search them. Before it can do that, it has to extract text from your file and map it into fields like employer, job title, dates, education, and skills. Most resumes that “fail the ATS” fail at that extraction step, not at some hidden scoring algorithm.

The score here reflects four things that affect extraction and human review:

• Keywords — whether the terminology matches how the role is described.
• Formatting — whether sections and dates are laid out predictably.
• Content — whether achievements are specific and measurable.
• Structure — whether contact details and section order are complete and logical.

What a score cannot tell you

No tool can predict whether you will be interviewed, and any tool that claims to is overselling. There is no single ATS: Workday, Greenhouse, Taleo, iCIMS, and Lever behave differently, and each employer configures its own screening rules on top. A high score means your resume is readable and specific. It does not mean you are a match for a particular job, and it does not bypass a recruiter’s judgment.

Treat the output as a diagnostic that points at unclear sections and vague claims. The decisions stay yours. We explain the reasoning behind the scoring in our methodology.

Getting a useful result

Paste the whole resume, not a fragment — the structure check needs to see your section headings and dates. If you upload a PDF, it must contain selectable text; a scanned image cannot be read by this checker or by most real ATS software, which is itself worth knowing.

Adding a job description changes the analysis from generic to specific: instead of guessing at industry terms, the checker compares your resume against that posting’s actual vocabulary and reports what is missing.

After the check

Work through the high-priority items first — they are usually structural, and structural problems affect every application you send. Add missing terms only where they truthfully describe work you have done.

When you are ready to rebuild, the resume builder starts from an ATS-safe template and delivers a finished PDF by email for free. For the reasoning behind each fix, see our resume guides or a role-specific example.