Checklist
The ATS-friendly resume checklist to run before every application.
An ATS-friendly resume is not a design style, it is a set of constraints. Work through this checklist once on your master resume, then only the top third changes per application.
- • Layout: single column, no sidebars, no text boxes, no tables.
- • Headers: Summary, Experience, Education, Skills, Projects, Certifications.
- • File: PDF with selectable text, named FirstName-LastName-Role.pdf.
- • Contact: plain text name, phone, email, city, LinkedIn — never in the page header.
- • Keywords: the posting's exact hard skills, placed inside real bullets.
Layout and file checks
Single column throughout. Two-column templates are the most common cause of dropped sections.
No content inside the document header or footer area. Many parsers never read that region.
No graphics, icons, rating bars, or text inside images. A skill shown as five filled dots is invisible to the filter.
Standard fonts and normal character spacing. Decorative spacing can split words mid-token.
Export as PDF and confirm you can select and copy every line. If a line will not highlight, it is an image.
Content and keyword checks
Headline matches the target job title wording as closely as is honest.
Summary is two lines and names your role, your stack, and your strongest result.
Every hard skill you claim appears at least once inside an achievement bullet, not only in the skills list.
Bullets follow action, method, number. At least half should carry a figure.
Dates are consistent, in MMM YYYY form, with no gaps left unexplained.
Acronyms are spelled out once with the short form in brackets, so both strings match.
Frequently asked questions
Copy the whole PDF into a plain text editor. If the order scrambles, sections vanish, or skills disappear, the parser sees the same mess. Then run a scored check against a real posting.
Modern systems parse both. PDF is safer for keeping your layout intact; what breaks parsing is the layout itself, not the format.
Most rank rather than reject. A low match score means a human is far less likely to reach your resume, not that it was deleted.
Only the ones that are true. Ten genuine matches placed inside bullets outperform thirty stuffed into a list.