It is a property of the file a parser opens. We build the parser behind Creatzi’s résumé checker, so this page shows what actually survives extraction — then gives you a builder whose templates are shaped around it.
Both résumés below have a sidebar. One survives extraction and one loses a job title. The difference is which fields sit beside the main column.
PRIYA SHARMA Senior Analyst EXPERIENCE Acme Corp — Senior Analyst 2021–Present Built reporting pipeline for finance SKILLS Python, SQL, Tableau, dbt, Airflow
PRIYA SHARMA
Senior Analyst Python 2021–
Present SQL Acme Corp dbt
Built reporting pipeline for finance
EDUCATION Airflow
B.Com, Delhi Univ TableauOn the right the job title has merged into a skill, so there is no Senior Analyst left to match against. On the left the skill terms also interleave — but they still index as skills, because nothing depends on their order. Order matters for experience, education and dates; it does not matter for a skills list.
Yes, and most advice telling you otherwise is repeating a rule it never tested. We ship 32 templates and score every one of them for extraction. 17 are sidebar layouts. They average 93 against 97 for single-column — a real gap, and a small one. The highest-scoring sidebar template on the site scores 98.
Lose the order here and you lose the field.
Lists whose terms still index correctly if the order scrambles.
An L — name and contact in a full-width band across the top, with the sidebar starting below it. Your identifying fields never sit beside anything, which removes the riskiest interleave entirely, and you keep the design.
Each exists because we hit the failure, wrote a test fixture for it, and taught the reader to name it rather than silently mangle the document.
| Hazard | What actually happens | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-column layout | A parser reading strictly left-to-right across the page interleaves the columns, so a job title from one column lands mid-sentence inside a skill from the other. | Single column for anything the parser must read: experience, education, dates. |
| Image-only page | The page contains no machine-readable text at all — a scan, an exported design, or a picture of a document. Most systems read nothing from it. | Export a text-based PDF from the source document, never a screenshot or a scan. |
| Header/footer text | Repeating running heads and feet across pages. Some parsers fold that repeated text into the body, so your name or a page number appears in the middle of a role description. | Keep contact details in the document body, not in the PDF header/footer region. |
| Hidden text | Text present in the file but invisible to a reader — set to a tiny size or positioned off the page. Sometimes used to stuff keywords. | Remove it. Our parser strips it and flags it; some screening systems reject the document outright. |
| Non-standard headings | No recognisable section headings, so there is nothing to anchor the sections to. "My Journey" is not "Experience". | Use the boring words: Experience, Education, Skills, Projects. |
| Low text density | Very little text relative to the page count — the signature of a heavily graphical or partly scanned résumé. | Cut decorative elements until the text carries the page. |
| Table layout | Content laid out in table cells. Cell boundaries frequently do not survive extraction, so dates merge into titles. | Use paragraphs and line breaks for structure, not tables. |
| Truncated document | The file is longer than the reader is willing to process, so later pages are never read. | Two pages maximum. Anything past that is a gamble on someone else’s page limit. |
The full write-up, with the three that cause the most damage, is in what breaks a résumé in an ATS parser.
30 AI credits, one-time, no card. Enough to draft and refine a full résumé.
Six free templates — 3 professional, 3 compact student one-pagers, each scored for extraction before it ships.
PDF and DOCX, free. Export is not the paywall — that is the trick we are not playing.
Yes, and export is free too. Every account starts with 30 AI credits and no card, six templates, and PDF and DOCX download. Most builders let you write for free and charge at the download; that is the moment we do not charge at.
Not on principle. A sidebar carrying skills, languages or certifications costs you very little, because those terms still index correctly even when the reading order scrambles. What you should avoid is a sidebar carrying job titles, employers or dates, where losing the order loses the field itself. Our sidebar templates are built the first way.
Machine-readable text rather than an image, standard section headings, a single reading order for experience and dates, and no content trapped in tables or the PDF header region. It is a property of the file that gets extracted, not a badge a template vendor assigns itself.
None specifically, because "ATS" is not one product. Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Taleo and iCIMS all parse differently and some are far more forgiving. What they share is the underlying job of turning a visual document back into structured fields, and every hazard on this page is a place where that translation goes wrong.
You can build without one. Sign in when you want to save a version or export the file.
Run it through the resume checker, which reports the structural hazards it finds by name, or the ATS score checker to score it against a specific job description. Both are free and work on any PDF, not just ones built here.
Templates scored for extraction, standard headings, free PDF and DOCX export.