What an ATS actually does to your file

An applicant tracking system is a database, not a judge. When you apply, it converts your document into text and tries to map that text onto fields: name, contact, employers, dates, titles, education, skills. A recruiter then searches and filters that database.

Rejections at this stage are rarely about quality. They happen because a parser could not find something it needed, or because the recruiter's search terms never appear in your text. Both problems are fixable in an afternoon.

• Multi-column layouts read left-to-right and interleave unrelated lines
• Headers and footers are often dropped entirely — never put your phone number there
• Contact details inside an image cannot be read at all
• Non-standard headings like 'Where I've Been' don't map to 'Experience'
• Missing month-year dates create gaps the system reads as unemployment

How this checker scores your CV

Your file is read the same way a parser reads it, then reviewed across seven dimensions: spelling and grammar, structure, length, content quality, design, measurable impact, and readability. Each gets its own score and written comments, and you receive an overall figure out of 100.

The report is specific to your document — it names the bullets that lack evidence, the sections that are missing, and the formatting choices that risk being lost in parsing. Nothing is generic advice you could have found on a blog.