How to Make an ATS Friendly Resume, and Why ATS Checkers are Bunk | AI Resume Builder
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How to Make an ATS Friendly Resume, and Why ATS Checkers are Bunk

September 24, 2025

"My resume scored 95 on an ATS checker, but I'm not getting any interviews... why??"

Recently, we got a post on our /r/SheetsResume subreddit from someone asking why they weren't getting any interviews, despite their "ATS Friendly" resume scoring a 95/100 on a popular online ATS Resume Checker (which shall remain unnamed).

I explained what was wrong with his resume despite the high ATS score, and he made a bunch of adjustments that should serve him very well.

Based on that post, I wanted to quickly dive in to what makes a good resume, not only to pass an ATS check, but also to get an interview (which is what actually matters).

What makes a resume ATS friendly? How can I pass an ATS check?

This is a simple question with a simple answer: if you are qualified for the role you're applying to and have relevant skills and experience, you will pass through an ATS check and make it to a human screener, who will then decide whether or not to schedule an interview with you. In other words, qualifications are what makes a resume the most "ATS friendly." (Imagine that!)

You can try to trick an ATS to let you through by stuffing a bunch of keywords in your resume, but the reality is that the human screener will still slap you back to the "no" pile with extreme prejudice if they think you're just keyword harvesting (i.e., if you have a huge Objective section with a ton of keywords... you're not fooling anybody).

Other than that, here's how you can make an ATS-friendly resume (just use our ATS-friendly resume template, which follows all these rules):

  • One page. Two, maximum, only if you really have to (and don't stop in-between – no 1.5 page resumes!). 95% of candidates can make it onto one page, and here's why you should try really hard to.
  • Clear formatting that uses whitespace well.
  • One column - i.e., don't have a left column and a right column. ATS systems (and humans) read resumes left-to-right, so if you have a left column of your skills, and a right column of your experience, it'll all get garbled when you submit it. (Those are also a pain for humans to read for the same reason.)
  • Bold and italicize the important things (company names, role titles, dates, locations, a couple words in key bullet points). Don't bold everything. ("When everyone's super, no one will be.")
  • Lead with your most impressive thing. For most people, this is your relevant work experience.
  • No Objective or Summary section.
  • No icons, doodles, cool colors, crazy fonts, or fun graphics.
  • Outside of some countries, no headshots. (Definitely NO HEADSHOTS in the US.)
  • List your skills both throughout your bullet points where relevant, and in a dedicated Skills section.

That's it! It's not rocket science. Just make it legible, easy to scan, and uncluttered. Nothing fancy, either (graphic designers make this mistake all the time).

Do online ATS checkers / ATS score websites actually work?

No, not really. Online ATS checkers are designed to tell you your resume sucks, no matter what it looks like, until you pay them to unlock their premium advice or premium resume builder. It's a marketing poly. "Shocking news, user: your resume scored low, but we can conveniently fix it for you! ...for $19/month."

The reality is that there is no reliable universal scoring rubric to know if you'll pass through all the myriad ATS systems out there, so every online ATS Checker is basically grading your resume with a finger-to-the-wind. They're designed to highlight problems that the website can fix (again, for a cost).

Sure, it can tell you if you're missing some keywords, but here's the thing: to rectify that issue, ATS checkers will often tell you to do something stupid and counterproductive, like add a summary with a bunch of keywords to the top of your resume. Then they'll say, "Job's done, boss," and you'll still get zero interviews.

Why a high-ATS-score resume may not always be the best to get an interview...

The reality is that employers' ATS systems err on the side of inclusion, not exclusion. A common misconception is that ATS systems are filtering out 90% of resumes, and a human is never even seeing yours. This is a popular online myth because people are trying to cope with why they didn't get an interview; it's easy to just blame the Terminator. But think about it: the only way an ATS system can get "fired" (uninstalled) is if a client goes into the "no" pile and finds out that its filtering out awesome, qualified candidates; clients understandably wouldn't like that.

Sure, an ATS can strip away the 20-40% of resumes that every job receives that are completely irrelevant, but ATS systems still actually flood recruiters and screeners with thousands of resumes and CVs. These candidates rank from mediocre to exceptional, with almost no sorting, so human screeners are still completely inundated, needing to screen hundreds or thousands of resumes every day. (Some ATS systems like Blue Saturn do rank candidates, but it's not common or reliable for most other ATS systems.)

All this is to say: you don't really need to focus on impressing the ATS. Instead, all your focus and energy should be spent on impressing the human who has to see your resume and decide to spend 30 minutes of their finite life on the phone with you. So if you're optimizing your resume to stuff in every possible keyword and skill, even at the cost of your resume's coherence or visuals, you're likely over-optimizing for the wrong thing.

Whether your resume grades a 65 or a 95 on an online ATS checker literally doesn't matter to your interview odds; what matters is what a human takes away from reading your resume in 10 seconds or less.

Sheets AI Resume Builder – ATS and Human Friendly

If you're tired of all the gimmicks, lies, marketing, and maniuplation, we've built an easy button for you: just use the Sheets AI Resume Builder to make an ATS friendly resume that's also guaranteed to land you more interviews.

And you know we're not bullsheeting you, because we will literally give our resume builder away for free to you if you can't afford either the $99 lifetime or $39 one-month membership. (Just email [email protected] and ask!)