ATS CV checker
Most CVs rejected by an applicant tracking system are rejected for mechanical reasons, not for judgement about the candidate. This checks the text a parser would extract.
Short answer: copy your CV and paste it below. If what appears is jumbled, out of order or missing sections, that is what the ATS reads — regardless of how the original looks.
Paste rather than upload on purpose — what you copy out is close to what a parser extracts. Checked in your browser; nothing is uploaded or stored.
What actually breaks parsing
Nearly always layout rather than wording: multiple columns read across instead of down, contact details stranded in a header or footer, text inside an image, tables whose borders survive as gibberish, and creative section titles a parser has no reason to recognise. A plainer document is not a worse document — it is one that arrives intact.
The full list is in the ATS-proof CV checklist. For structure conventions, the European Commission's Europass standard is a reasonable baseline.
Want a read on the content too?
This tool checks whether your CV can be read. Job Badger's free CV health check reads what it says — and tells you honestly where it is thin. Upload your CV →
Built by Nenad Franjic. The guidance here is tested against real applications and their outcomes — including the rejections — rather than written from a content brief.