Most job seekers spend hours perfecting their resume — only to have it rejected in seconds. Not by a human, but by software. Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) filter out roughly 75% of resumes before a single recruiter lays eyes on them.
Here are the seven mistakes that cause those rejections, and exactly how to fix each one.
1. Using a Fancy Template With Tables and Columns
Multi-column layouts look impressive in Canva. They're catastrophic in ATS.
Most tracking systems parse resumes left-to-right, top-to-bottom as plain text. A two-column layout gets scrambled — your job title ends up next to your phone number, your dates disappear entirely. The software can't make sense of it and moves on.
Fix: Use a single-column layout, or a layout where columns are clearly defined without tables. Clean, simple formatting always wins.
2. Missing Keywords From the Job Description
ATS software scores your resume against the job posting by looking for specific keywords. If the job says "project management" and your resume says "led initiatives," you're getting filtered out — even though they mean the same thing.
Fix: Read the job description carefully. Mirror the exact phrasing they use. If they say "cross-functional collaboration," use that phrase. Don't paraphrase.
Pro tip: Paste the job description into Arcenly's ATS checker — it tells you exactly which keywords you're missing and how to fix them.
3. Vague Bullet Points With No Numbers
"Responsible for managing social media accounts" tells a recruiter nothing. It doesn't show impact, scale, or results.
Fix: Every bullet point should answer: What did you do? How much? What was the result?
Bad: Managed social media accounts Good: Grew Instagram following from 2K to 18K in 6 months through daily content strategy, increasing website referral traffic by 43%
Can't remember exact numbers? Estimate. "~20%" is better than nothing.
4. Using an Objective Statement Instead of a Summary
"Seeking a challenging role where I can grow my skills and contribute to a dynamic team" is the most useless sentence ever written. Every hiring manager has seen it 10,000 times.
Fix: Replace it with a 2-3 sentence professional summary that answers: Who are you? What do you do? What's your best result?
Example: Frontend developer with 4 years of experience building React applications at scale. Led migration of a legacy codebase to TypeScript at Acme Corp, reducing bug rate by 35%. Looking to bring the same obsession with performance to a product-focused team.
5. Including Irrelevant Work Experience
Listing every job you've ever had — including the summer you worked at a car wash in 2015 — wastes space and buries the good stuff.
Fix: Only include experience from the last 10 years that's relevant to the role. If you have 15+ years of experience, go back further only if that earlier role is directly impressive.
For recent graduates: replace gaps with projects, internships, freelance work, or relevant coursework.
6. Using Images, Icons, or Graphics
Profile photos, skill bars (showing "Python: 80%"), and decorative icons all look great to human eyes. ATS software either skips them entirely or interprets them as garbage characters.
Fix: Remove all images and graphics. Represent skills as plain text. Instead of a skill bar, just write: Python, JavaScript, SQL, React.
7. Not Tailoring Your Resume to Each Job
Sending the same resume to 50 different job postings is the most common mistake of all. Every job is different. Every ATS is tuned to different keywords. A generic resume performs poorly across the board.
Fix: Keep a master resume. For each application, spend 10 minutes swapping in relevant keywords and reordering bullet points to match what they're looking for. It sounds like more work — but 5 tailored applications will outperform 50 generic ones every time.
The Bottom Line
Your resume doesn't need to be beautiful. It needs to be readable by software first, then compelling to humans second. Fix these seven things and you'll immediately see more callbacks.
If you want to skip the manual process, Arcenly's resume builder automatically formats correctly for ATS, suggests keywords based on the job description, and helps you write bullet points that actually land interviews.