Silence is a different signal than rejection. If you're applying to roles you're genuinely qualified for and hearing nothing at all — not even an automated "thanks, but no" — it's worth checking whether your resume is making it past parsing and initial screening in the first place, rather than assuming the content itself is the issue.
Five things worth checking
- Multi-column or table-based layouts. These are the most common cause of parsing failures — sections can be read out of order or dropped entirely.
- Contact information inside a header or footer. Some parsers skip these regions, which can mean your resume shows up in the system with no name or email attached.
- A scanned or image-based PDF. If text can't be selected and copied out of your PDF, an ATS almost certainly can't read it either.
- Job titles or dates that don't clearly map to a role. Ambiguous formatting here can break how your work history gets structured in the ATS record.
- Near-zero keyword overlap with the posting. Even a well-parsed, well-written resume can score low if it uses different language than the job description for the same skills.
How to actually check
The most reliable check is to open your resume as a plain text file, or copy-paste its content into a plain text editor, and see what comes out. If sections are missing, out of order, or run together, that's a strong signal of how an ATS parser will see it too. From there, comparing your resume's content directly against a specific job posting — not just skimming it yourself — will surface keyword gaps that are easy to miss by eye.
SoJob's ATS Optimiser runs both checks — parsing and keyword match against a real job description — for free, with no account required, so you can see exactly what an ATS would see before you apply.