Drop in your resume PDF to see the words a text extractor pulls out of it, in the order they come out, with a checklist of the problems that make resume parsing fail.
Drop your resume PDF here
Your PDF is read in this browser tab and never uploaded.
This checker doesn’t run your resume through Workday, Greenhouse or any other ATS, and it gives no score. It shows the text OneCV extracts from your file, and checks it against the parse problems Greenhouse and MIT document.
Eleven checks, each tied to a rule someone published. The results quote the rule and link to it.
Whether the PDF holds text a parser can read, or only a picture of it, such as a scan.
Source: Greenhouse SupportWhether the text comes out in the order you read it, or mixes columns, or stores dates away from their jobs.
Source: Greenhouse Support and MIT Career Advising & Professional DevelopmentWords that come out with a space between each letter, which letter spacing in a design can cause.
Source: Greenhouse SupportIcons and other characters that come out as symbols with no meaning.
Source: MIT Career Advising & Professional DevelopmentLetter pairs such as “fi” and “fl” stored as one special character, which changes the word some readers get.
Source: Unicode FAQWords broken with a hyphen at the end of a line, and hidden soft hyphens.
Source: MIT Career Advising & Professional DevelopmentYour email address and phone number, and whether they sit in a page header or footer.
Source: Greenhouse SupportCommon headings such as Experience and Education, and whether they come out in one piece.
Source: Greenhouse SupportDate ranges, and whether each section writes its dates one way.
Source: Greenhouse SupportPhotos, logos and other images, since a parser reads no text from them.
Source: Greenhouse SupportWhether the file is under the 2.5 MB that Greenhouse can parse.
Source: Greenhouse SupportIt doesn’t run your resume through Workday, Greenhouse, iCIMS or any other applicant tracking system. Each one parses resumes with its own software, so this page shows what OneCV extracts and checks it against published causes of failed parses. It gives no score or match rate, because a number would claim more than a text extractor can know.
Some layouts look like ordinary text once they’re in a PDF. A table or a text box comes out as positioned text, and a Word header shows up as a header only when the PDF tags it as one or it repeats on every page.
The automatic rejections that ATS vendors document are based on the employer’s screening questions and other rules, as our guide to whether an ATS rejects 75% of resumes explains. A clean parse still matters. When Greenhouse can’t parse a resume, it says the file “has only been attached to the candidate”, and someone has to type your details in by hand.
It’s the part of an applicant tracking system that turns your resume file into text and fills in your candidate profile, such as your name, contact details, jobs and education. This checker shows the first step, the text a parser starts from, and flags the layouts that ATS vendors say lead to partial parses. It doesn’t fill in fields or score your resume.
No. OneCV reads your PDF in your browser and shows you the text it extracts. Then it checks that text against the causes of failed parses that Greenhouse and MIT publish. Each item in the results names its source, so you can read the rule yourself.
No. The file is read inside this browser tab, and its text never leaves your device. We count each check that runs, with the number of pages and which items came up, and nothing from the resume itself.
A score would need to know how much each problem costs you in a particular ATS, and a text extractor can’t know that. You get the text and a list of what’s in your file, which you can check line by line.
Greenhouse lists columned layouts among the causes of failed parses, and MIT says columns can put text in the wrong order. Switch the text view to Across the page to see how a reader that ignores the file’s order mixes your columns. Our test of 105 resume layouts shows which kinds of columns come out in the wrong order.
A PDF stores its text in an order of its own, which isn’t always the order you read it in. Templates that put dates on the right of the page often store them later in the file, sometimes at the end of the page. A parser that reads in file order then finds the dates away from the job they belong to.
Not yet. Save your resume as a PDF from Word or Google Docs and check that. Most applicant tracking systems accept both formats, and our guide to sending a PDF or a Word document explains when each one is better.
Most fixes happen in the app you made the resume in. Turn off letter spacing and automatic hyphenation, replace icons with plain text, and move contact details out of the page header. Or import the PDF into OneCV, pick a one-column template and download a new PDF, then check it here again.
Yes. There’s no account and no limit. It runs in your browser, so a check costs us nothing.