Resource Guide
10 ATS mistakes, ranked worst to least bad.
Counting down from a minor deduction to the one mistake that can zero out your score entirely.
Creative section headers
Why it hurts: "Where I've Made Impact" instead of "Work Experience" may not get recognized as a section at all.
Fix: Stick to standard, boring headers. This is not where you show personality.
Inconsistent date formats
Why it hurts: Mixing "Jan 2023," "1/23," and "Winter 2023" confuses date-parsing logic.
Fix: Pick one format — Month Year — and use it everywhere.
Skills listed with no context
Why it hurts: A bare word cloud of skills scores lower than skills demonstrated inside real bullet points.
Fix: Work your top skills into at least one achievement bullet each.
Overly long resume for your experience level
Why it hurts: Padding a one-page resume to two pages dilutes keyword density and buries what matters.
Fix: One page under ~7 years of experience, two pages beyond that — no more.
Contact info in the header or footer
Why it hurts: Some ATS platforms don't parse headers and footers, so your name or email can go missing entirely.
Fix: Put contact details in the main body, top of the page.
No keyword match to the posting
Why it hurts: This is the single biggest driver of a low match score — the system is quite literally comparing word overlap.
Fix: Pull language directly from the job description and reflect it honestly in your resume.
Generic, unedited resume for every application
Why it hurts: The same resume sent to ten different postings will rank well for none of them.
Fix: Keep a master resume, then tailor the summary and top bullets per posting.
Icons or images used as section labels
Why it hurts: A briefcase icon instead of the word "Experience" is often invisible to a parser.
Fix: Use plain text labels — save the icons for a personal portfolio site instead.
Multi-column or table-based layout
Why it hurts: Parsers read left to right, top to bottom — columns and tables can scramble that order or drop content entirely.
Fix: Rebuild in a single column. This is the fastest fix with the biggest payoff.
Submitting a scanned image or flattened PDF
Why it hurts: If there's no selectable, extractable text, the ATS has nothing to parse — you may as well have submitted a blank page.
Fix: Export directly from Word or Google Docs as a text-based PDF, or send the .docx.
Know where you actually stand