5 ATS Resume Mistakes to Avoid

Mistake 1: Contact details in the header or footer

This is first because it is the most costly and the least known. Many parsers process only the main body of a document and skip the header and footer regions entirely.

The result is an application stored in the database with no phone number and no email address. Everything else about you parsed correctly. There is simply no way to contact you, and no recruiter is going to investigate why.

How to tell

Open your resume and click into your name. If your word processor shows you are editing a header — or if the text greys out when you click in the body — your details are in the header region. In an exported PDF, copy the whole document into a plain text editor and check whether your email appears at all.

The fix

Move your name, phone, email, city, and any link into the first lines of the document body. Plain text, one per line or separated by simple bullets. This costs you nothing visually and removes the failure completely.

Mistake 2: Sending an image instead of a document

A resume exported as an image, scanned from paper, screenshotted, or photographed contains no text — only pixels arranged to look like text. A parser extracts nothing from it. Your application effectively arrives blank.

This happens more than you would expect: people photograph a printed resume, or export from a design tool at an image setting, or screenshot a preview screen on a phone because it was quicker than finding the export button.

How to tell

Open the PDF and try to select a single word with your cursor. If the text highlights, you have a real document. If you get a selection box over the whole page instead, it is an image.

The fix

Export properly as a PDF from whatever tool you wrote it in. If the only copy you have is a scan, retype it — it is an hour, and the alternative is every application silently failing.

Mistake 3: Columns, tables, and text boxes

Designed templates put skills in a sidebar, dates in a table column, and a profile in a tinted box. Each of those is a parsing hazard.

Content order in the file does not always match visual order on screen. A sidebar can be interleaved with the main column. A table can be read down each column rather than across each row, so every date arrives detached from the job it belonged to. Text boxes frequently sit outside the content flow and are dropped without trace.

The frustrating part is that the output is rarely broken enough to look broken. It is just wrong — a plausible-looking record with your third job attached to your second employer’s dates.

How to tell

Copy the entire PDF and paste it into a plain text editor. Read the result top to bottom. If sections appear out of order, or a title has drifted away from its dates, the layout is the cause.

The fix

Rebuild in a single-column layout with ordinary paragraphs and lists. Use tabs or right-aligned text for date alignment rather than table cells. Keep the designed version for your portfolio if you like it — just do not submit it through a portal.

Mistake 4: Vague or missing structure

Two related problems. The first is creative section headings — "My Journey" instead of "Work Experience" — which leave a parser unable to classify an entire block of your resume. The second is incomplete entries: a job title with no employer, an employer with no dates, a role described in a paragraph with no clear beginning.

Both produce the same outcome. Your experience is present in the document and absent from the structured fields recruiters filter on, so filters for "three years in the role" or "worked at a company of this type" pass you by.

How to tell

Look at each role and check that four things are present and distinct: job title, employer, location, and a date range with months. Then check that every section uses a heading a stranger would recognise.

The fix

Use the conventional headings — Work Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications. Give every role all four identifying details on their own lines before the bullets begin. Write dates as "Mar 2022 – Aug 2024", with the month spelled or abbreviated rather than numeric.

Mistake 5: The same resume for every application

The most common of the five, and the one people resist fixing because it is the only one that takes real effort each time.

A single generic resume is written in your vocabulary rather than the employer’s. When a recruiter searches their database for the terms in their own advert, your record does not contain those terms, so you do not appear — regardless of how well you would have done the job.

It also shows. A recruiter reading a summary that could have been aimed at any company in any industry draws the obvious conclusion about how much thought went into the application.

How to tell

Open your resume beside the advert. If you cannot find at least five terms present in both, it is not tailored to this role.

The fix

Keep one master resume and adapt it per application. Rewrite the summary for the role, reorder skills so the most relevant sit first, and move the most relevant bullet to the top of each job. Fifteen to twenty minutes, and far more effective than sending three times as many identical applications.

The check that catches four of the five

Before you send anything, run this. It takes two minutes and surfaces every mistake on this list except tailoring.

1. Open your exported PDF. The real file you are about to send, not the editor preview.
2. Select all, and copy. If you cannot select the text at all, stop — you have mistake 2.
3. Paste into a plain text editor. Any blank note or email body will do.
4. Read the result carefully. Is your email address there? Are the sections in order? Is each job title still beside its own dates? Is every heading recognisable?

Whatever is missing or scrambled in that plain text is what an employer’s system receives. Fix the original until the pasted version reads correctly, and the mechanical part of your application is sound.