☐ Check each box. Miss 3+ and your resume gets auto-rejected by most ATS.
⚡ Format & File Type
☐ .docx or PDF — ATS-friendly. Never .png/.jpg (zero parsability).
☐ Standard fonts — Arial, Calibri, Roboto. Fancy fonts = unreadable scan artifacts.
☐ No columns or tables — ATS reads left→right, top→bottom. Multi-column = scrambled.
☐ No headers/footers — Text in them is invisible to 90% of ATS engines. Put contact info in body.
☐ Single-column layout — One continuous vertical flow. Sidebars get ignored.
🎯 Keywords & Content
☐ Job description keywords — Mirror the JD's top 10 skills & tools verbatim.
☐ Standard section headers — "Experience", "Education", "Skills". No "My Journey" — ATS won't find it.
☐ Action verbs — Led, Built, Optimized, Designed, Negotiated. (not: "Was responsible for")
☐ Quantified results — "Increased sales 34%", not "Increased sales". Numbers boost ranking.
☐ Industry acronyms — Include full + acronym: "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)". Both get matched.
🧹 Clean Up
☐ No graphics/logos — Icons, progress bars, headshots confuse parsers → auto-reject.
☐ 10–15 pt font — Smaller = unreadable scan. Larger = artifacting.
☐ No text boxes or WordArt — ATS can't extract text from embedded objects.
☐ Consistent date format — "Jan 2020 – Mar 2023" throughout. Mixed formats confuse parsers.
☐ Contact info in body — No header/footer. Name, phone, email, LinkedIn, location — top of page.
✅ Final Sanity Checks
☐ 1 page (or 2 max) — 10+ years exp = 2 pages. No more. ATS truncates past ~2.5.
☐ Run through Jobscan / Skillroads — Match rate should be ≥80%. If not, rework.
☐ Plain-text test — Paste your resume into Notepad. Anything garbled? Fix it in the original.
☐ No personal photos — Bias liability. Most ATS auto-strip them; some reject.
⛔ EXTRA CRITICAL: Save as "FirstName_LastName_Resume.pdf" — never "Resume_FINAL_v3(2).pdf".
💡 Pro Tip: Submit your resume as plain .docx (~20% higher ATS passthrough than PDF). But if the JD says "PDF only" — always follow the instruction.