Can software actually read your CV?
Eight checks on the things a parser looks for: your contact details, your dates, your headings, your layout. You get a parse score and the exact reason behind every point lost.
Your CV
- Free, no account
- Your CV is never stored
- Eight checks, instantly
What a score without a job can never tell you
This matters more here than on our other tools, because the whole category quietly implies otherwise.
What it does measure
Whether the text comes out of your file at all, and whether a parser can find your email, your dates and your sections. Whether the length is sensible, whether you used bullets, how those bullets open, and whether they carry figures. All of it computed by rules, so the same file always gets the same number and every point lost has a stated reason.
What it cannot measure
Whether you are a good candidate. That is only ever true relative to a specific job, and this page has not been given one. It also cannot tell you what any particular employer’s system will do with your file: those are private and they differ. If you want a number that means something about a real role, use the match score instead.
How the check works
- 01
The text is pulled out of the file
The same way an applicant tracking system does it. If your CV is a picture of a CV, almost nothing comes out, and that alone is worth knowing before you send it anywhere.
- 02
Eight checks run over what came out
Contact details, dates, section headings, length, bullets, how those bullets open, whether they carry figures, and whether the layout survived extraction.
- 03
The score is the weighted result
Contact details and dates carry the most weight, because a CV a system cannot pull an email or a work history from is the real failure. Same file, same number, every time.
Questions
- What does the score actually mean?
- How easily software can read your CV, out of 100. Nothing more. It is a parse score, not a grade on your experience, and it cannot be one: judging a CV needs a job to judge it against, and this tool is not given one.
- Will this tell me if I will pass an employer's ATS?
- No, and neither will anything else. Those systems are private, they differ by company, and most do far less automatic filtering than the internet claims. What we can tell you is whether the text comes out of your file cleanly, which is the part that is genuinely under your control.
- Why did my beautiful two-column CV score badly?
- Because a parser reads it in one pass and columns interleave into nonsense. Try it yourself: open the file, select all, copy, and paste into a plain text editor. If what you see is jumbled, that is what software sees. A single column is duller and it survives.
- Do you keep my CV?
- No. It is read into memory, checked, and thrown away in the same request. It is never written to our database, never attached to an email address, and never used to train anything.
- Is a higher score always better?
- Up to a point. Once the checks pass, more effort on formatting returns nothing, and the remaining work is about content: whether your bullets say what you actually achieved. The written suggestions cover that part, and a job description would tell you far more than this page can.
How we handle data is in the privacy policy.
