Free ATS Resume Checker
Most resumes are read by software before a person sees them. Upload your resume or CV and find out exactly what an applicant tracking system can — and cannot — read.
- Instant result
- No sign-up
- Nothing stored
Drop your resume or CV here
PDF or Word (.docx), up to 5MB. No sign-up, and nothing is stored.
What an ATS actually does with your resume
An applicant tracking system does not read your resume the way a person does. It extracts the text, tries to map that text onto fields — name, contact, employer, title, dates, skills — and stores the result as a record. Recruiters then search those records.
This matters because everything the parser fails to map is effectively invisible. A beautifully designed resume whose job dates live inside a graphic produces a record with no employment history. It was never rejected; it simply never matched a search.
The widely repeated claim that ATS software auto-rejects most resumes is largely a myth — these are databases, not judges. The real damage is quieter: information gets lost on the way in, and you never find out.
The eight things this checker looks for
Contact details in the body
Text in a header or footer is often not extracted.
Standard section headings
Parsers map content by heading. "My Journey" does not map.
Dated roles
No dates means an ATS cannot compute your years of experience.
Quantified achievements
Numbers survive both keyword matching and human skimming.
Action verbs
"Led", "shipped", "reduced" — not "responsible for".
A summary section
The densest place to put the words a recruiter searches.
Bullet structure
Dense paragraphs parse poorly and get skimmed past.
Parseable length
350–600 words is the range that holds detail without burying it.
Frequently asked questions
- What is an ATS resume checker?
- An applicant tracking system (ATS) is the software employers use to store and search applications. An ATS checker reads your resume the way that software does — as extracted text — and reports what it can and cannot find. If a parser cannot locate your dates, headings or contact details, recruiters searching the system may never see you.
- Is this ATS checker free?
- Yes. There is no sign-up, no payment and no limit worth worrying about. Your file is read in memory to produce the score and is never stored.
- What ATS score is good?
- On this checker, 80 or above means the structure an ATS depends on is all present. Between 55 and 79 it will parse but something it filters on is missing. Below 55, expect information to be lost. The score measures parseability and structure — not whether you are a strong candidate for a particular job.
- Will this tell me if I match a specific job?
- No, and it does not pretend to. This checks how well your resume is structured for any ATS. Matching against a specific job description is a different question, which HAMRA answers once you are signed in.
- Can it detect columns or tables?
- No. Extracting text from a PDF loses the layout, so no text-based checker can honestly tell a two-column resume from a one-column one. If yours uses columns, tables or text inside images, export a plain single-column version and check that instead.
- Does this work for a CV as well as a resume?
- Yes — it is the same check. In India, the UK and much of Europe "CV" is simply the word used for the document a resume describes elsewhere, and an ATS parses both identically. The one exception is a long academic CV running to many pages: the length check will flag it, and for an academic application that flag is safe to ignore.
- Should I use a PDF or a Word document?
- Either works if the text is real text rather than a scan. A text-based PDF is the safest default for modern systems. Avoid exporting your resume as an image or scanning a printout — parsers see nothing at all in those.
Keep going
- Resume guides by role — what to put on a resume for your specific job title.
- Salary benchmarks — what the role pays by experience and city.
- What recruiters actually look for — beyond the parser.