Free Resume Scanner: Land 3X More Job Interviews
Scan your resume against any job description to get your match score, missing keywords, and formatting fixes in seconds. It's free.
What is an ATS—and is your resume ready for it?
When you submit your resume online, it goes into an ATS database. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are used by 98% of Fortune 500 companies and small businesses alike to help manage resumes.
Hiring managers don’t search through every resume manually. They type keywords into the search bar, and only the resumes that contain those keywords come up.
Our ATS resume checker analyzes your resume against the job description and shows you how to make your resume more ATS-friendly, so your resume surfaces when it matters.
Your results will appear in seconds and give you a match rate percentage, missing keywords, formatting flags, and section analysis.
Optimize for keywords
Our tool analyzes your resume against the job description, identifying the exact hard and soft skills you’re missing. These must-have keywords come directly from the job description, not a generic list.
Our scanner checks for:
-
Hard skills
-
Soft skills
-
Other keywords
-
Buzzwords
-
Industry lingo
Get data-driven improvement suggestions from experts
Our resume rating system shows you how to tailor your resume for a specific job listing, increasing your chances of getting an interview for that exact role.
Jobscan’s resume scanner was built with input from professional recruiters. Get expert tips to ensure your resume avoids common formatting mistakes and stands out in your job search.
Get recruiter tips on:
-
Job level match
-
Measurable results
-
Resume tone
-
Web presence
-
Word count
Fix formatting that breaks ATS scans
Our analysis checks your resume’s formatting to ensure it is clear and correctly processed by modern recruiting systems.
Incorrect formatting can confuse an ATS, causing it to misread or overlook important information, even if your content is strong. Avoid this by ensuring your resume is properly formatted.
With Jobscan’s resume scanner, you receive simple, actionable suggestions for changes to your resume’s formatting, putting you in control of your application.
-
Layout
Checks for single-column layout—multi-column layouts are misread by many ATS systems. Flags tables, text boxes, headers, footers, and graphics for you to remove.
-
Font & font size
Checks for overuse of special characters, bold styling, and inconsistent fonts. Reviews font size and color to meet ATS readability standards. Confirms that font typeface are web-safe, like Arial, Calibri, or Garamond.
-
Page setup
Checks for headers and footers that some ATS can’t parse. Reviews margin and page size to ensure your resume meets standard formatting requirements.
-
Section and content rules
Reviews and flags non-standard section headings. Ensures content is in reverse chronological order and includes both the full term and the acronyms. Checks that contact information in the body of the resume and not in the header/footer.
What the scanner checks: the full analysis
Our system runs over 30 checks on your resume to make sure it’s optimized for what recruiters look for. This intelligent resume checker scores your resume content by prioritizing the most important elements so that you make the right changes.
-
ATS-specific tips
Input the job’s company name and URL in the ATS Tip feature to detect the specific ATS being used, helping you fine-tune your resume for better ATS performance.
-
Style and Format
Enures contact details and email address are in the resume body. Reviews resume format and checks for buzzwords and cliches. Assesses file type (PDF or .docx), resume length, and date formatting.
-
Resume Sections
Performs a summary analysis (are the sections present and populated), alerts to non-standard heading titles, and flags missing sections.
-
Keywords and Skills
Checks hard skills—technical and role specific terms drawn directly from the job description. And reviews soft skills—communication, leadership, collaboration, and similar interpersonal terms.
Assesses other keywords like job titles, certifications, tools, and methodologies. And industry lingo—sector-specific language the employer expects to see.
Flags the repetition of words or phrases and missing skills.
-
Resume Content
Reviews job title, years of experience match, spelling and grammar checks, measurable achievements, and education match.
-
And More
All it takes is a few seconds in the resume scanner to perform 30+ checks on your resume, giving you more time to prepare for your upcoming interviews.
Step-by-step: how to check your resume
Upload your resume
Paste in the text from the job listing
Optimize your resume
Increase your Match Rate
Your resume matcher: tailoring for every job
Sending the same resume to every job is one of the most common reasons qualified candidates don’t get called back. ATS systems rank resumes by how closely they match the job posting and that match starts with keywords.
Jobscan’s resume matcher shows you your match rate: a number that helps you visualize how closely your resume matches the job description.
The match report will give you a separate breakdown for hard skills and soft skills, so you know exactly where the gap is.
Scan your resume, see what’s missing, make the changes, and re-scan in minutes. Or level-up and use AI Optimize to automatically apply the missing keywords—no manual editing required.
Understanding your ATS score
Your Jobscan score reflects a few things: how well your resume performs with ATS software, and how effectively your content communicates your value to recruiters.
A score of 75+ is the target, meaning your resume is strongly aligned and you’re well-positioned for the role.
Initial lower scores are typical—just scan, identify gaps, act on the match report information, and re-scan to see your score climb.
Keep in mind, when you submit your resume to a job, the ATS doesn’t score your resume. The match rate in our scanner is a visualization tool to help you measure the strength of your resume before you apply.
ATS compatibility
The resume scanner measures whether the ATS can correctly read and extract information from your resume. It covers formatting choices, file type, section headings, and other structural elements that determine whether your resume will be parsed correctly.
Content effectiveness and impact
Your score also measures how well your resume’s content matches the specific job. It covers your keyword inclusion, measurable achievements, bullet point strength, job title alignment, and language quality.
A higher score means your resume is better positioned to reach a recruiter. Jobscan users who act on their scan results get up to 3x more interviews—because they’re fixing the right things.
What now? Your next steps to get a new job: Your complete job search toolkit
Explore More Features
FAQs
A resume scanner analyzes your resume to check for ATS compatibility and gives feedback on how to optimize it for job applications.
An ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is software that companies use to filter, parse, and rank resumes during hiring, often determining if your resume gets seen by recruiters.
The best resume scanner is one that evaluates your resume for ATS compatibility, offers tailored feedback, and helps you optimize for specific job descriptions—like Jobscan’s ATS resume scanner.
Our scanner compares your resume to the job description, analyzing formatting, keywords, and relevancy to calculate your Match Rate and provide actionable feedback.
Jobscan’s resume scanner runs over 30 checks. Our scanner checks for formatting issues, keyword usage, job title matches, and ATS-friendly features like font and layout to improve your resume’s performance.
Yes, generating your Match Report and seeing your initial score is completely free. Our goal is to provide every professional with the data they need to start their job search with clarity and confidence.
Yes, Jobscan’s scanner simulates an ATS to show how your resume performs and suggest improvements.
Your resume is scored on a scale of 1-100%. We recommend a score of at least 75% in order to increase your interview chances. The higher, the better!
Use standard fonts, avoid columns, tables, or images, and include relevant keywords directly from the job description to optimize your resume for ATS.
Yes, 98% of Fortune 500 companies use ATS to filter and rank resumes, saving time by identifying the most qualified candidates.
Your match rate is based on your hard skills, education level (when an advanced degree is included in the job description), job title, soft skills, and other keywords. Jobscan’s resume checker scores for over 30 parameters. Your resume score report will also give feedback on word count, measurable results, and other relevant topics based on expert insights from recruiters.
Yes, ATS scan resumes to extract and evaluate information like skills, experience, and education, matching them to job requirements.
Your resume is likely being filtered out by an ATS because it contains complex formatting—like tables, columns, or graphics—that the software cannot parse correctly. Additionally, if your content lacks the specific keywords or job titles found in the job description, the system may rank your profile as a low-match for the role. To fix this, use a resume scanner and optimize your resume.
While you don’t need to rewrite your entire history, you should tailor your resume for every application to ensure it aligns with the specific requirements of the role. Customizing your summary and key skills to match the job description significantly improves your chances of passing through ATS filters and catching a recruiter’s eye.
Think of it as a strategic tweak rather than a total overhaul to prove you are the specific solution to that company’s problem.
Yes, Jobscan can often identify the specific ATS a company uses when you provide the company name and the URL of the job listing. Through our ATS Tip feature, the tool analyzes the job application link to detect the system (such as Greenhouse, Taleo, or Workday) and provides specialized formatting advice tailored to that software’s unique quirks.
This allows you to optimize specific details like file types, keyword matching, and headings to ensure your resume is parsed correctly by that exact system.
While they are often used interchangeably in casual conversation, Jobscan functions as a high-powered resume checker that mimics how an employer’s resume scanner (the ATS) actually operates. It goes beyond simple spell-checking by using analyzing your resume against a specific job description, generating a match rate based on keywords and formatting.
By simulating the “scanning” process, Jobscan identifies exactly what is missing or unreadable, allowing you to optimize your document before it ever hits a recruiter’s database.