Tables, columns, text boxes, and images break ATS parsing before a single keyword is read. The formatter scans your resume for these issues and tells you exactly what to fix.
Check my resume formattingUpload your resume as a PDF or Word document, up to 10MB. The formatter accepts both file types and handles all standard resume layouts.
The tool checks for tables, columns, headers, footers, embedded images, text boxes, special fonts, and encoding issues that cause ATS systems to misread or skip content entirely.
Each issue is flagged with the exact reason it hurts ATS parsing. You get a prioritized list of changes to make, ordered by how much each one is likely to affect your parsed score.
Tables are the single most common reason ATS systems misread resume content. A skills table that looks clean to a human reader becomes garbled text when an ATS tries to parse it. The formatter flags every table and explains the specific parsing risk.
Contact information placed in a Word header or footer is invisible to most ATS platforms. If your name, email, or phone number lives in a header, the ATS may create a blank candidate profile. The formatter identifies this and tells you where to move the information.
Non-standard fonts, embedded graphics used as bullet points, and special characters outside standard Unicode ranges can all corrupt how your resume text is read. These issues are invisible visually but show up as gibberish in the ATS candidate record.
After flagging issues, the formatter shows you what the ATS actually reads from your current file. Seeing the raw parsed text makes the problem concrete. You can compare it to what your resume looks like visually and understand exactly why the formatting change matters.
Visual appearance and ATS readability are completely separate things. A resume can look polished and professional while containing tables, embedded graphics, and non-standard fonts that cause an ATS to output scrambled text. The ATS reads the file data, not the rendered PDF image. Formatting that looks good in preview can still produce a garbled candidate record.
It depends on the specific ATS, but a clean Word file typically parses more reliably than a PDF because ATS systems have better native support for the Word format. That said, a well-structured PDF with no tables or embedded graphics performs comparably. The formatter checks both file types and tells you which issues are present regardless of format.
Using a table for your skills section is the single most common ATS formatting mistake. It appears in the majority of designer resume templates because it looks organized and clean. However, most ATS platforms either skip table content entirely or output it as a single run-on string. Moving your skills to a simple bulleted list is usually the highest-impact fix you can make.
Find every formatting issue that is hiding your keywords from ATS.
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