The résumé checklist

Ten basic checks, in the order they decide your file. Plus the truth about two columns, which is not what you have been told.

Ten checks that decide whether your file is read at all. They are the basics, and most rejected résumés fail on two or three of them before a person ever sees the page. Run them before you send.

The one myth worth killing first

You have read that two columns break applicant tracking systems. That is not the real rule, and following it blindly costs you a layout that reads well.

What actually breaks a parser is how the file was made, not how many columns it has. A résumé assembled in a design tool, a slide deck or a word processor's text boxes has no reliable reading order underneath it, so the parser can interleave your sidebar with your job history and hand the recruiter nonsense. A two column résumé produced by a proper résumé builder carries a defined reading order and comes through intact. Our own builder ships both single and two column templates for exactly that reason, and our checker reports a two column layout as information rather than an error.

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Before anyone reads a word

Build it somewhere that exports real text. A résumé builder or a plain word processor document. Not a design tool, not a slide, not a screenshot, not a scan. If you cannot select and copy the text out of your own PDF, neither can the software.
Contact details in the body of the page, not tucked into the header or footer area of the document. Several parsers skip both.
Standard section names. Summary, Experience, Education, Skills. "My Journey" is not a section anyone is looking for.
Send a PDF unless the portal asks for Word, and name the file Firstname-Lastname-Role.pdf. Untitled document goes into a folder with four hundred others.
No skill rating bars, no icons carrying meaning. A five dot rating is a picture. It tells software nothing and it tells a recruiter less than one line of evidence would.

The photograph question, which has no single answer

This is a market convention, not a parsing problem. A photograph on a résumé is normal in much of the Gulf and parts of Europe and Asia, and it is a liability in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, where employers strip identifying details to reduce bias claims. So the honest answer is that it depends entirely on where you are applying, which is why our country guides say which convention applies in each of the 29 markets we cover rather than giving you one rule for all of them.

Then the five that decide whether you are called

The target job title sits under your name, in the words the advertisement used. Not your internal designation.
Every bullet ends in a result. A number, a percentage, an amount, or time saved. A bullet that describes a duty has told the reader nothing they did not assume.
Every skill you list appears in a bullet too. An unsupported skills list reads as a wish list, and experienced interviewers discount it entirely.
A gap of six months or more gets one honest line. Silence invites a worse explanation than the truth usually is.
It was written for this job. If the same file could go to three different advertisements unchanged, it is not ready for any of them.

Check it in a minute, free

Upload your file for a free ATS score at edzer.ai. It reads the file the way an employer's software does and tells you what came through and what did not, which is faster than guessing from a checklist.

Free ATS check

You have just seen where the numbers come from. Does your résumé pass the filter that reads them?

75 checks across 19 parameters, the six-second recruiter scan painted on your actual page, and the three biggest fixes shown in full. Under a minute. If your score is under 85, that is the gap between you and the shortlist.

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