What makes an ATS fail to read a resume?

How ATS resume parsing works

An ATS does three things before a recruiter sees anything. It pulls the text out of your file. It sorts that text into sections using your headings. Then it fills fields (name, jobs, dates, skills) from the lines under each heading. A mistake in the first two steps carries into the third, and nothing warns you. The resume still uploads; the fields are just wrong. The full walk-through of how an ATS reads a resume covers the later steps, keyword matching and ranking.

What we found in 462 real resumes

Rates are from ResumeAtlas's own ATS parsing benchmark: 462 distinct resumes that people submitted, run through the same rules the free ATS resume parser uses. A separate study of 28 popular Canva templates covers the column question.

Most resumes do not fail outright. They read, but parts come out scrambled. 4.5% did not turn into a usable record at all. “Flagged” means our check raised a warning on that part of the resume. It does not mean an employer rejected it.

What this does and does not tell you: the numbers describe one parser and a sample of people who chose to run a check, skewed toward software, data and engineering roles. Commercial systems such as Workday, Taleo and iCIMS read files differently from each other (see how they differ), and not every ATS rejects tables or columns. The risk is quieter than rejection: details end up in the wrong place.

Can an ATS read resumes with tables?

It reads the words but loses the table. When the text is pulled out, the cell borders disappear, so a row that held a job title, a company and dates becomes a run of text where those three things no longer sit together. A phone number or a date split across two cells can come out broken.

Skills grids are the costly version: 1.7% of 462 resumes had a skills section the parser could not use (grids, rating bars, a skills block in a side column). Keyword search runs on that field.

Fix: keep experience, skills and contact details out of tables. Use one line for the job title, company and dates, a comma-separated list under a heading called Skills, and one plain line of contact details with the words spelled out (Email: you@example.com).

Do columns affect ATS resume parsing?

Often, yes. A parser reads across the page line by line. With two columns, it takes a line from the left, then a line from the right, and stitches them together. A skills sidebar ends up inside your experience, and dates drift away from the jobs they belong to.

How common: 25.8% of 462 real resumes were flagged for columns or tables holding core content (14.1% failed the check, 11.7% raised a warning). 21 of 28 popular Canva resume templates we tested use two columns by default (see the full Canva parse test).

Fix: move everything into one column, with skills below experience instead of beside it. Keep the design in the headings, not the grid.

Why do job titles and dates get separated?

This was the most flagged problem in the sample. 26.2% of 462 resumes had work experience where roles merged or a title and its dates were not paired (17.1% failed the check, 9.1% raised a warning). It usually starts with layout: dates pushed to the far right, set in their own column, or placed in a different cell from the title. Once the text is pulled out, the date no longer sits next to its job, and the parser may attach it to the wrong role or run two roles together.

Fix: use the same pattern for every role, in the same order: job title, company and location on one line, dates on the same line or the line directly below, typed as text (Jan 2021 to Mar 2024). No tab stops, no side column for dates.

Do non-standard section headings matter?

The parser sorts your text into sections by reading headings, so a heading it does not know can leave the lines under it with no home. 16.7% of 462 resumes were flagged for content left under no heading the parser recognises. Even the three core headings (Experience, Education, Skills) were recognised on 83% to 86% of resumes, not all of them.

Headings that showed up in at least 3 resumes and that our parser has no field for: “declaration”, “personal details”, “additional information”, “contact”, “key achievements”. These are not errors in themselves, but anything important under them is easy to lose. The resume sections guide has the standard wording and the order that works.

Fix: use plain, standard headings (Summary, Experience, Education, Skills) and fold extras into the closest one, or drop them if they add nothing.

Can an ATS read icons, text boxes and sidebars?

Not reliably. A text box floats outside the normal reading order, so its text is often skipped or read in the wrong place. Icons are worse: an envelope picture next to your email is not text, so a contact line made of icons can read as no contact details at all.

How common: 10.2% of 462 resumes were flagged for contact icons, emoji, decorative symbols or text broken into fragments. No dataset on this site isolates text boxes on their own, so treat that part as standard guidance rather than a measured rate.

Fix: turn text boxes into normal paragraph text, fold sidebars into the main column, and replace contact icons with words.

Are headers and footers ATS-friendly?

Not for anything that matters. Many parsers only read the body of the document, so anything in the header or footer band can be skipped, and that is usually your name, phone number and email.

How common: 9.1% of 462 real resumes had the name, email or phone in a header or footer band. Across the same sample, 10.2% lost the name entirely, 4.3% the email and 6.5% the phone number during parsing.

Fix: put your name and contact details at the top of page one, in the body. Remove headers and footers, or keep only a page number.

What it looks like: wrong layout and right layout

An illustration with made-up content, not a real resume and not the output of any specific ATS. It shows how reading a page line by line mixes up two columns.

SKILLS          EXPERIENCE
Excel           Analyst, Acme Corp
SQL             2021 to 2024
Tableau         Led a team of four

Read as:
SKILLS EXPERIENCE Excel Analyst,
Acme Corp SQL 2021 to 2024
Tableau Led a team of four

EXPERIENCE
Analyst, Acme Corp
2021 to 2024
Led a team of four

SKILLS
Excel, SQL, Tableau

Read as: the same, in order.

[header band]
Jordan Lee | jordan@example.com

SUMMARY
Data analyst with five years...

Read as: no name, no email.

Jordan Lee
Email: jordan@example.com

SUMMARY
Data analyst with five years...

Read as: name and email found.

The layout an ATS reads best

1. Your name at the top, in the body (not the header)
2. One line of contact details, as text
3. A single column below, top to bottom
4. Standard section headings (Experience, Education, Skills) in bold
5. The same title, company and dates pattern for every role
6. Bullets for details

For fonts, margins and spacing, see the full ATS formatting rules and the guide to ATS-friendly fonts. For the file type, see PDF or Word for ATS.

ATS resume formatting checklist

• One column from top to bottom, with no side column or sidebar.
• No tables holding experience, skills or contact details.
• Name and contact details in the body of page one, not in a header or footer.
• Contact details written as words, with no icons or emoji standing in for them.
• No text boxes, and no important text inside images or graphics.
• Standard headings for each section, in the same style throughout.
• Each role written the same way: title, company, dates, then bullets.
• Test it: select all, paste into a plain text editor, and check the order. Or upload it to the ATS resume parser and see which fields come back.

Common questions