10 ATS Formatting Mistakes That Get Resumes Rejected
Most resume advice focuses on content — what to write, which keywords to include, how to frame your experience. But before any of that content reaches a recruiter, an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) must successfully extract it from your document. If it can't, your qualifications may appear missing or garbled in the system regardless of how strong the underlying content is.
ATS formatting failures are largely invisible. Your resume looks polished in PDF preview. The ATS database shows something different — missing sections, interleaved text, empty fields where your experience should be. You may never know it happened.
To understand why these failures occur, it helps to know that ATS systems don't read your resume the way a person does. They parse document structure — extracting text in the order it flows through the file, looking for recognized patterns that signal sections, headers, and content boundaries. Anything that disrupts that flow may cause extraction errors. (For a full explanation of how ATS systems work and why employers use them, see our complete ATS guide for job seekers.)
Below are the ten formatting mistakes that most commonly interfere with ATS parsing, with technical explanations and fixes for each. You can also run your resume through the free ATS checker to see if formatting issues are reducing your score.
(For a deeper look at how ATS scoring works across all four dimensions — not just formatting — see our post on how ATS resume checkers work.)
Mistake 1: Two-Column or Multi-Column Layouts
Why it breaks ATS parsing: ATS text extraction reads content left-to-right and top-to-bottom as a single stream of text. A two-column layout has two parallel text flows — the ATS may interleave them, reading the left column line by line and then the right, or attempting to read both simultaneously, producing garbled output where contact information ends up in the middle of your work history.
The real-world result: A recruiter's ATS view might show your name, then your job title from the left column, then your phone number mixed into a work description — or it might show a cleanly extracted left column and a completely missing right column (where your skills section lives).
Affects: Formatting compliance score, completeness score (if sections in the second column aren't extracted)
Before (broken):
[Left column] [Right column]
John Smith Skills: Python, SQL
Software Engineer Education: BSc CS, 2020
Company A, 2022–24 Certifications: AWS
After (fixed):
John Smith
Software Engineer | john@email.com | (555) 000-0000
Skills: Python, SQL, AWS Certified
Work Experience
Software Engineer — Company A (2022–2024)
Education
BSc Computer Science — University Name (2020)
Mistake 2: Tables for Organizing Content
Why it breaks ATS parsing: ATS parsers treat document text as a continuous flow. Table cells are separate text containers — the parser may extract them in row order, column order, or skip them depending on the platform. A skills table with two columns might produce output where all left-column skills appear first followed by all right-column skills (losing the skill-to-category relationship), or the table content might be missed entirely.
Affects: Formatting compliance score, completeness score (if skills section content is in a table)
Before (broken):
Skills
| Leadership | Python |
| SQL | Agile/Scrum|
| Tableau | PowerPoint |
After (fixed):
Skills
Leadership, Python, SQL, Agile/Scrum, Tableau, PowerPoint
Or as a bulleted list, grouped by category — either parses cleanly.
Mistake 3: Text Boxes and Floating Elements
Why it breaks ATS parsing: Text boxes and positioned frames in Word, Google Docs, and design tools create independent text containers that sit "above" the main document flow. Most ATS parsers read only the main document layer — text inside floating frames may be partially extracted, extracted at the wrong position, or skipped entirely.
This is a common issue in templates that use a stylized header with a floating name block, or a sidebar created with a positioned text box rather than a true column layout.
Affects: Formatting compliance score; contact information may be lost if it's inside a text box
Before (broken):
[Text box at top of page containing name and contact info]
[Main document body below with work experience]
After (fixed):
John Smith
john@email.com | (555) 000-0000 | linkedin.com/in/johnsmith
[Main document body continues in the same text flow]
Mistake 4: Icons or Graphics as Skill Indicators
Why it breaks ATS parsing: Skill bars (filled dots, progress bars, star ratings) and icons used to represent skills are images — they have no text content for the ATS to extract. If your skills section uses five filled circles to indicate proficiency in Python, the ATS sees an image, not the word "Python." Your skills section may appear completely empty in the recruiter's ATS view.
Affects: Formatting compliance score, keyword density score (skills keywords missing from parsed output)
Before (broken):
Skills
● ● ● ● ○ Python
● ● ● ○ ○ SQL
● ● ○ ○ ○ Machine Learning
[icons used for proficiency level]
After (fixed):
Skills
Python (Advanced), SQL (Intermediate), Machine Learning (Familiar)
Or simply list skills without proficiency indicators — most ATS scoring doesn't distinguish levels, and recruiter preference for proficiency display varies.
Mistake 5: Headers and Footers Containing Contact Information
Why it breaks ATS parsing: Many ATS parsers skip or misplace content in document headers and footers. If your name, phone number, email, or LinkedIn URL is in the header of a Word or Google Docs file — rather than in the main document body — the ATS may extract the document without any contact information, or show your name at the bottom of the parsed text rather than the top.
Affects: Formatting compliance score, completeness score (contact info may appear missing)
Before (broken):
[Document Header: John Smith | john@email.com | (555) 000-0000]
[Main body starts with Professional Summary]
After (fixed):
[Main body starts with:]
John Smith
john@email.com | (555) 000-0000 | linkedin.com/in/johnsmith
Professional Summary
...
Mistake 6: Creative or Non-Standard Section Headings
Why it breaks ATS parsing: ATS systems are trained to recognize specific section heading patterns: "Work Experience," "Professional Experience," "Employment History," "Education," "Skills," "Certifications." When a heading doesn't match a recognized pattern — "Career Journey," "My Story," "Professional Narrative" — the system may fail to associate the content below it with the correct structured field.
The impact: your work experience may be parsed as an unstructured text block rather than a sequence of job records, making it difficult for the ATS to extract job titles, company names, and dates correctly.
Affects: Formatting compliance score, completeness score
Before (broken):
My Professional Journey
Career Highlights
Where I've Studied
Core Competencies
After (fixed):
Work Experience
(or: Professional Experience)
Education
Skills
(or: Technical Skills, Core Competencies — this one has more flexibility)
Mistake 7: Embedded Images — Headshots, Logos, or Decorative Elements
Why it breaks ATS parsing: Images embedded in a resume document have no text content. Headshots, company logos, decorative dividers, and background graphics are invisible to ATS text extraction. Beyond the parsing issue, including a headshot may create legal concerns in some jurisdictions — many employers have policies against including photos to avoid bias claims, and some ATS platforms are configured to strip images automatically.
Decorative dividers and background graphics can also interfere with the parser's ability to identify section boundaries if the design relies on visual cues rather than text-based headings.
Affects: Formatting compliance score
Fix: Remove all images, headshots, logos, and decorative graphic elements from your resume. Use text-based section dividers (horizontal rules in plain text, or simply a blank line) and rely on font formatting — bold headings, slightly larger heading text — for visual hierarchy rather than graphics.
Mistake 8: Fancy Borders and Decorative Dividers
Why it breaks ATS parsing: Borders, shading, and complex divider elements in Word or design tools are rendering artifacts — they appear visually but may not be part of the document's text flow. Some parsers read border markup as garbled characters; others ignore it. The practical risk is that section boundaries become ambiguous, causing the parser to group content incorrectly.
Affects: Formatting compliance score
Fix: Use simple blank lines between sections rather than graphic borders. Bold section headings on their own line are sufficient to create visual separation that both humans and parsers can follow.
Mistake 9: Missing or Merged Standard Sections
Why it breaks ATS parsing: Some resume designs merge sections that ATS systems expect to be separate — for example, listing education items inline within a work experience timeline, or combining summary and skills into a single unlabeled block. Others omit sections entirely: no dedicated skills section, no summary, no education section because the role doesn't require a degree.
ATS completeness scoring expects specific fields to be present. Missing sections may reduce your completeness score even if the information is technically present elsewhere in the document.
Affects: Completeness score, formatting compliance score
Before (broken):
[Combined timeline mixing jobs and education without distinct sections]
2022 — Software Engineer, Company A
2021 — BSc Computer Science, University Name
2019 — Junior Developer, Company B
After (fixed):
Work Experience
Software Engineer — Company A (2022–Present)
Junior Developer — Company B (2019–2021)
Education
BSc Computer Science — University Name (2021)
Check your resume's ATS score free to see if section completeness is a factor in your score.
Mistake 10: Unusual File Formats
Why it breaks ATS parsing: Most ATS platforms accept PDF and DOCX reliably. Other formats — Apple Pages (.pages), OpenDocument Text (.odt), RTF, or image-based files (JPEG, PNG) — may be converted automatically before parsing, with unpredictable results. A Pages file opened in Word, for example, may have layout shifts that affect extraction. An image-based PDF (a scanned document or a design tool export with no embedded text) has no extractable text at all — the ATS receives a blank document.
Affects: All scoring categories (if the file cannot be parsed, the score may default to zero or the application may fail silently)
Fix: Submit as PDF (text-based, not image-based) unless the job posting explicitly requires DOCX. If you built your resume in a design tool like Canva, Figma, or Adobe Illustrator, the exported PDF may be image-based — verify by trying to select and copy text in the PDF. If you can't select text, the file will likely fail ATS parsing.
How to Check If Your Resume Has These Issues
Working through this list manually is a good start. To confirm whether your current resume is affected, run it through the free ATS checker at MyResumeKit — it evaluates your resume's formatting compliance along with completeness, action verb usage, and keyword density, and flags specific issues in each category.
If you're starting a resume from scratch, MyResumeKit's resume builder uses single-column, ATS-safe templates by default. All output passes text extraction without any formatting adjustments — no columns, no tables, no graphics, no headers or footers with contact information.
For more on the full set of signals ATS checkers evaluate (not just formatting), see our guide on what ATS resume checkers actually score. To understand how ATS scoring affects your position in a recruiter's candidate queue, see our post on ATS resume scores: what they mean and how to improve them.
Summary
ATS formatting failures are invisible — your resume may look professional as a PDF while the ATS database contains missing or garbled data. The most common causes are multi-column layouts, tables, text boxes, non-standard section headings, headers and footers containing contact information, and graphic elements that have no extractable text.
The fix is straightforward: use a single-column layout, standard section headings, plain text content, and save as a text-based PDF or DOCX. Verify with a formatting check before submitting to roles where the application goes through an online portal.