Check your résumé the way a machine reads it
Pulls the text out of your résumé exactly as an applicant tracking system would, hands you that text as a Word file, and names the specific places your layout breaks it.
How to check a résumé for ATS problems
- Choose your résumé PDF. The check starts on its own.
- The text is pulled out the same way a tracking system pulls it, and anything that breaks is listed.
- Read the Word copy. If it reads badly there, it reads badly to the system — fix the PDF and run it again.
What this checks, and what no tool can
An applicant tracking system does not look at your résumé. It runs text extraction over the PDF — much the same extraction this site does — and then recruiters search the result. So the only question that matters is whether the text comes out whole, in the right order, with your name and contact details attached. That is what this page answers.
The Word file is the point, not a side effect. It is the text as the machine got it. If your job titles are glued to the wrong dates there, they are wrong in the system too, and no amount of good design on the page will fix it.
Three failures are worth more than all the rest. A résumé exported as an image has no text at all, and is rejected before a person sees it. A two-column layout interleaves the columns line by line, so your skills end up inside your work history. And a PDF whose fonts were embedded without a character map produces letters that look right and extract as nonsense.
What this page will not do is give you a score. A number out of a hundred would have to be invented, because no two tracking systems rank the same way and none of them publish how. Keyword advice has the same problem: the keywords that matter are the ones in the posting you are answering, which this page has never seen. It tells you what is measurable in your file and stops there.
It also will not claim to detect tables. PDF does not record that a table is a table — it records lines and positioned text — so any tool that says your tables are fine is guessing. If you used tables, check the Word copy and see for yourself.
Questions about ATS and résumés
Does this give my résumé a score?
No, and be wary of anything that does. A score would have to be invented: tracking systems differ, none publish their ranking, and none of them are consulted by a tool running in your browser. This names specific, measurable problems in your file instead.
Is a PDF résumé bad for ATS?
Not in itself. Modern systems read PDFs fine. What breaks them is what is inside — no text layer, columns, or glyphs with no character map — and those are exactly what this page looks for.
Why does it hand me a Word file?
Because that file is the answer. It is your résumé as the machine reads it. Skim it: if the order is wrong or words are missing, that is what a recruiter searches, not the handsome page you designed.
Can it tell me which keywords to add?
No. The keywords that count are in the job posting you are answering, and this page has not seen it. Anyone promising a universal keyword list is selling one.
Is my résumé uploaded?
No. A résumé holds your name, address, phone number and work history — it is exactly the document that should not be sent to a stranger's server. Everything here happens in your browser.