What does an ATS see in your resume?
Before a person, your resume is read by a program that pulls out the text. Upload it and see exactly what it understands: your details, your roles and your dates, and what gets lost along the way.
What an ATS is, and why it matters how it reads your resume
An ATS (applicant tracking system) is the software companies use to receive and sort applications. Before anyone opens your resume, the ATS extracts the text, splits it into fields (name, contact details, roles, dates, education) and stores it. Whatever it cannot read does not exist for the recruiter.
Most ATS do not reject a resume on their own: they show what they understood to whoever searches with filters and keywords. A badly read resume shows up incomplete, or does not show up in those searches at all.
This tool uses the same reader Cernoria uses to build your profile: it extracts the text from the PDF or Word file without recognizing images, as an ATS does, and shows what it understood and what got lost.
Frequently asked questions
- Does an ATS reject my resume automatically?
- Hardly ever on its own. Most keep every resume and let the recruiter filter by keywords, years of experience or location. The real risk is that your details are read wrongly and the resume does not show up in those filters.
- Which does an ATS read better: PDF or Word?
- Both, as long as the PDF has text and is not an image. A PDF exported from Word or Google Docs reads fine; a scan or a photo has no text to read.
- Are two columns, tables and icons a problem?
- They can be. Some readers mix up the columns or skip what sits inside a table or an icon. A single column with clear headings is the safest; with two columns, it is worth checking here how it comes out.
- Is my resume stored?
- No. It is read, the result is shown and it is discarded. No account needed.
- Does this tell me which keywords are missing for a job ad?
- No: it shows what an ATS understands from the resume in general. To see which words a specific job ad asks for, and get your resume tailored to it, there is Cernoria, with a 3-day free trial.