CV checker

Free CV Checker

Paste the job advert and see how well your CV matches it, which keywords you are missing, and what an applicant tracking system will fail to read. Free account, no credit card required.

Check my CV free

Checked against the advert, not against a template

A CV that suits one role rarely suits the next one.

Paste the advert you are applying to and the scanner reads it properly: the tools it names, the skills it repeats, the phrasing the employer uses. Then it tells you how many of those appear in your CV and how many do not. Run the same CV against three roles and you get three answers, which is the whole point of tailoring rather than sending one document everywhere.

Scan my CV against a role

The keywords the advert asks for, and the ones you are missing

Recruiters search the system by keyword before anyone reads a word.

Missing skills are listed plainly, grouped into hard skills, soft skills and everything else, with how many times each one appears in the advert. Click any of them to see where it sits in the job description. Nothing is invented for you, so what you add is your own wording rather than a phrase a machine guessed at.

Find my missing keywords

The formatting that quietly breaks a parser

Most of what goes wrong is invisible when you look at the page.

Applicant tracking systems read top to bottom and left to right. Two columns interleave into nonsense, contact details in a header are often dropped entirely, and anything inside an image is not read at all. The checker flags the layout problems separately from the keyword match, so you can tell a formatting failure from a content one.

Check my CV formatting

CV checker questions

Is a CV the same as a resume?

Outside the US they mean the same document, and this checker treats them the same way. In the US a CV is a longer academic record and a resume is the one or two page version sent to employers. If you are applying in the UK, Ireland, Australia or New Zealand, the CV you already have is what you want to upload. Applying to US employers instead? The ATS resume checker is the same scan with US conventions.

Do UK and European employers really use applicant tracking systems?

Yes. Most large employers and nearly all recruitment agencies run one, and the same systems used in the US are used here. The practical effect is the same: your CV is parsed into fields and searched by keyword before a person reads it, so wording that matches the advert matters more than it feels like it should.

How long should my CV be?

Two pages is the usual expectation for most roles in the UK and Ireland. Australia and New Zealand tend to accept two to three. Academic and research CVs run much longer and are the exception. The checker flags length against the role you paste in rather than against a single fixed rule.

Should I put a photo on my CV?

Not for the UK or Ireland, where employers usually prefer you do not, and not if an applicant tracking system is in the way, because a photo is an image and the parser cannot read anything inside it. Some European markets still expect one. If you keep it, keep your name and contact details as real text elsewhere on the page.

What does the CV checker actually look at?

Two things. It reads the job advert and pulls out the skills, tools and phrasing it asks for, then checks how many of those appear in your CV and scores the match. Separately it checks the document itself for the things that break a parser: multi-column layouts, contact details stranded in a header, text inside images, and dates written in a format the system cannot read.

Is it free?

Yes. A free account includes two job match scans a week and ten AI credits, and it does not ask for a card. Free accounts see which section each issue sits in. Premium marks the exact words to change and scores your CV live as you edit it.

See how your CV scores

Free account, no credit card required.

Check my CV free