10 Common ATS Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

The preventable errors that keep strong candidates invisible — with fixes you can apply in one editing session.

Elena had fifteen years in nursing administration. She wasn't struggling to tell her story; she was struggling to get it into the system intact. After a month of applications, she ran her PDF through a parser demo and watched her latest role appear under a college internship from 2004.

Nothing on her resume was wrong factually. It was wrong structurally — the kind of mistakes that don't show up when you preview in Word but explode the moment Workday ingests the file. Here are the ten she fixed first.

1. Using a photo in US/UK corporate applications

Photos can confuse parsers and introduce bias filters. For US, UK, and most remote tech roles, skip the photo. Classic ATS, Simple Plain, or Technical templates work better.

2. Burying contact info in a header

Put email, phone, and LinkedIn in the main body under your name. PDF page headers are often stripped — if your email only lives there, the ATS may never capture it.

3. Creative section names

"Where I've Been" instead of "Experience" looks clever and fails keyword matching. Keep at least one standard term recruiters and parsers recognize.

4. Missing dates on employment

ATS ranks by recency. Always include month/year or year for each role. The Chronological template keeps dates visible without clutter.

5. Paragraphs instead of bullets for experience

Dense paragraphs are harder for humans to scan and harder for parsers to chunk. Use short bullets starting with action verbs — one achievement or responsibility each.

6. Skills listed only in a graphic

Star ratings and progress bars are invisible to text parsers. List skills as comma-separated text or plain bullet names.

7. Wrong file type

Portal says "Upload Word document"? Export DOCX. Accepts PDF? Use ResumeFriendly PDF. Never upload a screenshot or phone photo of your resume.

8. Keyword stuffing

Repeating the same keyword thirty times or hiding white text gets flagged. Use important terms naturally — two or three times across summary and experience is enough when they're in context.

9. Inconsistent job titles

Official title was "Member of Technical Staff" but you write "Software Engineer" everywhere? Align with HR records, or note both: "Member of Technical Staff (Software Engineer)".

10. One resume for every job

Tailor summary and top three bullets to mirror each posting. Duplicate your resume in ResumeFriendly, rename it for the role, adjust keywords — ten minutes that changes whether you surface in search.