ATS Checklist: Before You Submit Any Job Application

Most job seekers invest significant time writing and formatting their resume but submit it without running any final quality checks. Given that the majority of resumes are screened by applicant tracking systems before a human ever reads them, a five-minute pre-submission checklist is one of the highest-return habits a job seeker can build.

Formatting Checks

ATS systems parse text. Anything that interferes with clean text extraction will reduce your score or cause your resume to be skipped entirely. Before submitting, verify each of the following:

• No text boxes, columns, or tables — use a single-column layout throughout.
• No headers or footers containing critical information — ATS systems frequently skip these entirely.
• No graphics, icons, or images — these are invisible to most parsers.
• Standard fonts only — Arial, Calibri, Garamond, or Georgia in 10 to 12 points.
• File format matches the posting — .docx is most universally compatible; PDF works on modern systems but verify.
• Consistent date formatting throughout — "Month YYYY" or "Mon YYYY" is safest.

Keyword Checks

Open the job posting alongside your resume and check the following before submitting. These checks take only a few minutes and consistently improve match scores.

First, confirm that the job title or a close variation appears in your resume — either in a current/recent role or in your professional summary. Second, verify that the top five required qualifications listed in the posting are addressed somewhere in your resume with matching or closely mirrored language. Third, check that any required certifications, tools, or technical skills mentioned in the posting appear explicitly in your skills section.

Contact Information and Basics

A surprising number of applications fail because of basic contact information errors. Verify that your name, email address, phone number, and location (city and state or country) are all present in the header. Check that your LinkedIn URL, if included, is a custom URL rather than the default numeric string. Confirm that your email address is professional — the address you used in college may not serve you well in a job search today.

Final Read-Through

Read your resume aloud once before submitting. This catches awkward phrasing, repeated words, and grammatical errors that silent reading misses. Check that every bullet point begins with a strong action verb and that no bullet exceeds two lines. A clean, scannable resume performs better both with ATS systems and with the human reviewers who follow.

Five minutes before every submission can save you weeks of wondering why you are not getting responses.