The 10 Worst ATS Mistakes Job Seekers Make

Applicant Tracking Systems filter out a significant portion of applicants before any human ever looks at them. Many of those filtered candidates are genuinely qualified — they're just making formatting or content mistakes that cause the software to score them poorly.

Here are the 10 most common ATS mistakes, and exactly how to fix each one.

Mistake 1: Using a Two-Column Layout

Two-column resumes look polished to human eyes, but many ATS systems read them left-to-right across both columns, combining unrelated text into a jumbled stream. A single-column layout eliminates this risk entirely.

Mistake 2: Putting Contact Info in a Header

Many ATS systems skip content placed in document headers and footers. If your name, email, and phone number are in the header section of your Word document, they may never be parsed. Put all contact information in the body of the document.

Mistake 3: Using Text Boxes

Text boxes are a popular design element — and they're ATS poison. Most parsing software cannot read text inside a text box at all. Any content you put in a text box is effectively invisible to ATS.

Mistake 4: Using Tables

Tables cause similar issues. ATS software often reads table content left-to-right, row by row, combining content in ways that make no sense. Use standard paragraph text and line breaks instead.

Mistake 5: Using Non-Standard Section Headers

ATS systems look for specific section labels. "Career Highlights" might not be recognized as a work experience section. "My Strengths" might not be parsed as skills. Use standard headers: Work Experience, Education, Skills, Summary, Certifications.

Mistake 6: Not Including Keywords From the Job Description

This is the most common and most impactful mistake. Every ATS scores your resume against the job description. If the role requires "Agile methodology" and your resume says "flexible development process," you may not match. Use the employer's exact language.

Mistake 7: Using Images, Icons, or Graphics

Charts showing your skill levels, icons next to section headers, photographs, and decorative graphics are all invisible to ATS parsing software. Worse, they can interrupt the text flow around them, causing adjacent content to be misread.

Mistake 8: Submitting as a PDF From a Design Tool

Resumes created in Canva, Adobe InDesign, or similar design tools and exported as PDF are often image-based rather than text-based. These PDFs look great but contain no parseable text — meaning the ATS reads them as a blank document. Stick to Word-generated or text-based PDFs.

Mistake 9: Using Abbreviations Without Spelling Them Out First

If you write "SEO" but the ATS searches for "Search Engine Optimization," you might not match. The fix is simple: write out the full term and include the abbreviation in parentheses the first time: "Search Engine Optimization (SEO)." After that, abbreviations are fine.

Mistake 10: Not Tailoring the Resume to the Job

A generic resume that you send to every job will score lower than a tailored one on virtually every ATS. The keywords, the language, the priorities — all of it should be adjusted to match the specific job description. Even 15–20 minutes of tailoring per application can significantly improve your ATS score and callback rate.