NodusTechATS CV Checklist
25 checks you can verify yourself, with your CV open — file format, layout, text, structure, keywords and contact details. No upload, nothing stored.
You've met 0 of 25 checks
Work down the list with your document open. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is saved.
File and format
Layout
Text
Structure
Content
Contact details
This is a checklist, not a score — the items are not equally weighted, and no checklist can guarantee any particular system will parse your document. It removes the known common failures.
Why a checklist and not a CV score
Free “ATS checkers” that grade an uploaded CV are guessing: real applicant tracking systems differ by vendor and by how each employer configures them, so a single percentage score has no basis. We won't publish a fake number. What is honest is a list of the known common failures — every item above is something you can verify yourself, and fixing them removes the avoidable reasons a CV parses badly.
The two failures that cause the most silent damage are contact details placed in the document header (some parsers skip headers entirely, so the employer has a CV with no way to reach you) and body content held in tables or text boxes, which can come out scrambled or not at all.
How to use it
Open your CV alongside this page and work down the groups in order — file first, because a wrong format wastes every other fix. Anything you can't tick is a specific, fixable defect, and the layout and text groups are the ones worth fixing first: they decide whether the system can read your CV at all, before keywords decide whether anyone searches it up.
Then re-run the list once per application, not once per CV — the content group (matching the advert's wording for skills you honestly have) changes with every role you apply for.
Want the document already built to pass every check?
This checklist tells you what to fix. The bundle is the CV and cover letter already laid out to clear every structural check on this page — editable in Word, with a Google Docs edition included — so you fill in content rather than rebuilding a layout.
ATS-Friendly Resume & Cover Letter Bundle — €10.99
Or browse the full CV & Career collection for other career stages.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an ATS?+
An applicant tracking system is the software employers use to receive, parse and store applications. It is a database, not a robot that judges you — the risk is that a heavily designed CV parses badly, so a human searching that database never finds you.
Does a PDF or a Word file work better?+
Modern systems read both. The honest rule: send whichever format the advert asks for, and if it doesn't say, a text-based PDF preserves your layout everywhere. Never send an image-based or scanned PDF — there is no text in it to read.
Will a two-column CV definitely be rejected?+
No — and no checklist can honestly promise otherwise, because ATS behaviour varies by vendor and configuration. A single column simply removes the parsing risk entirely, which is why it is the safe default when you can't know what system is on the other end.
Do I need to match keywords exactly?+
Use the advert's own words for skills you genuinely have — if the advert says "stock control" and you wrote "inventory management", say both. Do not stuff keywords you can't back up: the CV is read by a human after it is found by the machine.
Does a beautifully designed CV ever help?+
In design-led fields where a human reviews a portfolio directly, yes. For anything submitted through an online portal, design that relies on graphics, columns and text boxes mostly adds parsing risk. Clean, plain and consistent reads as professional everywhere.
Related Career Resources
21 checks covering the opening, evidence, tone and the small mistakes that get letters binned.
CV Length GuideOne page or two? The honest answer by career stage, what to cut first and what never to cut.
General guidance based on common parsing behaviour — no checklist can guarantee how any specific employer's system is configured.