Should I always submit my resume as a PDF?

Not always. Use .docx by default unless the job posting specifically asks for a PDF, and if you do send a PDF, export it directly from Word or Google Docs rather than scanning or flattening an image into it. The instruction in the job posting always wins over any general rule.

Will a two-column resume automatically get rejected?

Rejected isn't quite the right word. Most ATS platforms don't reject on formatting alone. What actually happens is subtler and worse. A two-column layout can get read in the wrong order, merging unrelated lines of text together, so a section that looks fine to you gets stored as garbled fragments in the parsed record a recruiter searches.

Are resume templates from Canva or similar design tools safe?

Generally not, for anything beyond a light visual refresh of an already-simple layout. Design tools favor text boxes, icons, and multi-column grids because they look good, and those are exactly the elements that scramble parsing. A plain Word or Google Docs template with standard headers is a safer foundation.

How do I check if my resume will parse correctly?

Copy the entire text of your resume and paste it into a plain text editor (Notepad, TextEdit, or a blank email draft). If the result reads in the right order, with nothing missing or jumbled, that's a strong sign it will parse cleanly. If names, dates, or bullet points show up out of sequence or disappear, that's exactly the kind of formatting problem an ATS will hit too.

The Complete ATS Resume Formatting Guide

Quick answer

An ATS-friendly resume is a single-column, reverse-chronological layout in .docx or text-based PDF, with standard section headings, no tables, text boxes, or graphics, and nothing critical in headers or footers. Those layout elements scramble parsing — the step where the software extracts your text into structured fields — which is how qualified candidates become invisible. Fonts and colors matter far less than structure: if a machine can read it top to bottom in order, it parses.

Start with the file format

The .docx-versus-PDF debate has a simple answer for most people: use a .docx file unless the job posting specifically asks for a PDF. Jobscan's own guidance leans this way for a practical reason. A poorly exported or scanned PDF can strip out selectable text entirely, and an ATS that can't select your text can't parse it. If you do submit a PDF, export it directly from Word or Google Docs, never a scanned image, and never a PDF built by combining a resume with a photo or a design template in something like Canva.

Whatever format the job posting requests, use it. Ignoring an explicit instruction like "please submit as a Word document" is a worse signal than any formatting risk you're trying to avoid.

The layout choices that scramble parsing

Single column, top to bottom, is still the safest structure. Multi-column layouts, sidebars, and text boxes look organized to a human eye, but most parsers read left to right across the full page width rather than column by column. We cover this in our guide on how ATS screening works: iCIMS specifically reads multi-column documents left to right across the entire page, so content in a left sidebar and content in the main column at the same vertical position get merged into one jumbled line of text.

The same logic applies to tables, headers, footers, and embedded graphics. Tables often get read out of order or dropped entirely. Anything placed in a page header or footer, a common spot for contact info in designed templates, frequently gets stripped before the parser ever sees it. Icons next to your phone number or email look clean, but some parsers can't extract text wrapped around or inside a graphic element, and the number or address effectively disappears.

Fonts, sizing, and section headers

Stick to fonts a parser recognizes as standard text: Arial, Calibri, Garamond, Georgia, Helvetica, Tahoma, Times New Roman, or Verdana. Body text should sit between 10 and 12 point. Below that, some parsers start treating small text as decorative rather than content, and skip it.

Section headers matter more than they seem to. Use the plain, expected labels: Experience (or Work Experience), Education, Skills, Certifications. A header like "My Journey" might read as charming to a person, but a parser is pattern-matching against a known list of section names, and a header it doesn't recognize can mean the content underneath never gets correctly categorized.

Dates, contact details, and section order

Keep every date range in the same format throughout the document (Jan 2022 - Present, not a mix of "01/2022" in one role and "January 2022" in another). Parsers use date patterns to build your work history timeline and calculate total experience, and inconsistent formatting can break that calculation.

Put your contact information (name, phone, email, city) in the main body of the document, not in a header or footer, and as plain text, not inside a text box or table. Reverse-chronological order, most recent role first, remains the default nearly every ATS and recruiter expects. A functional or skills-based format that buries your work history can genuinely confuse both the parser and the human who reads it next.

Formatting gets you parsed. It doesn't get you found.

None of this replaces the harder part. A perfectly formatted resume with generic content still won't surface in a recruiter's keyword search. Formatting makes sure the ATS can correctly read what you wrote. Whether what you wrote actually matches how your specific field gets searched is a separate problem, and it's the one we cover in how ATS screening actually works.

If you want the condensed version of everything above, our free ATS Resume Checklist covers these same checks in a two-page PDF you can run through before you hit apply.

Where we come in

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