ATS-Friendly Resumes: What Applicant Tracking Systems Actually Parse

75% of resumes are rejected by applicant tracking systems before a human sees them. This statistic is thrown around so often it's become meaningless. The real question is: what causes ATS rejection, and what can you do about it? How ATS parsing works An ATS receives your resume file (PDF, DOCX, or plain text), runs it through a parser that extracts structured data (name, contact info, work history, education, skills), and stores that data in a searchable database. Recruiters then search the database with keywords and filters: "JavaScript AND React AND 5+ years experience in San Francisco." Your resume either matches or it doesn't. The "rejection" isn't a binary pass/fail in most systems. It's a relevance ranking. Your resume might be in the database but ranked #847 out of 900 applicants, which functionally means it's never seen. What breaks parsing Tables and columns. Two-column layouts look great but confuse parsers. The parser reads left-to-right, top-to-bottom. A two-column layout m