An openly published checklist of the 30 rules an applicant tracking system (ATS) effectively applies to a résumé PDF — what each rule checks, why real parsers break on it, and how to fix it.
Most résumé checkers return a score without disclosing what they measured. This is the complete rule set behind CVLoom's free ATS checker, published so you can act on it with any tool, or none.
Read the full rule set → RULES.md
An ATS reads the text layer of your PDF, not the design a human sees. A résumé that looks immaculate can still arrive as scrambled text — columns interleaved mid-sentence, headings lost to letter-spacing, dates unparseable, contact details stranded in a header the parser skipped.
Every rule here is one concrete way that happens, phrased so you can check it yourself.
The rules divide into four categories, weighted by how badly each failure hurts:
| Category | Points | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Parseability | 40 | Whether the file yields clean, correctly-ordered text at all |
| Contact info | 10 | Whether a parser can find how to reach you |
| Structure | 30 | Whether the document reads as a résumé: sections, dates, ordering |
| Content quality | 20 | Whether the writing matches what recruiters scan for |
A passing rule scores full points, a warning scores half. Any hard failure in the Parseability category caps the total at 49 — if the text can't be read, nothing downstream matters.
The rules are released under CC BY 4.0: use them, quote them, build a checker with them, translate them, teach from them. Attribution to CVLoom is all that's asked.
Corrections and disagreements are genuinely welcome — open an issue. A rule that turns out to be wrong is worth more fixed than defended.
- Free ATS résumé checker — scores any PDF against these 30 rules. No signup, nothing stored, no paywall.
- The rules as a web page — each rule individually linkable.
- The rules as Markdown — the token-efficient edition, kept byte-identical to this file's source.
- How CVLoom works — what happens to an uploaded file, and how the project stays free.
Maintained alongside CVLoom, a free résumé builder and ATS checker. Made with ❤️ for everyone still sending applications.