How to Pass ATS Filters on Greenhouse and Lever

What "passing the filter" means

People picture a robot that deletes resumes. The vendor pages I could confirm describe something plainer. The system takes your file, fills in a candidate profile, and a person looks at that profile. If the file parses badly, your profile is thin or wrong, and the person sees a worse version of you.

So make parsing easy, then make the human view strong. This page sticks to what the vendors say. Where I couldn't confirm a detail, I say so.

Greenhouse: what it says about parsing

Greenhouse has a support page on unsuccessful resume parses. It states the following.

• Files over 2.5MB can't be parsed, especially ones with high-quality images.
• Resumes with obvious placeholder data, such as "First Last" as a name or "Company 1" as an employer, are rejected.
• Formatting that breaks parsing includes spaces between letters, graphics, photos, word art, image-based uploads, tables, headers and footers, columns, inconsistent section formatting, missing company suffixes like Inc. or LLC, and abbreviated job titles such as "Sr. Account Exec".
• Name and contact info placed in a header, footer or text box can be missed.
• It names .docx and .pdf as supported, against a resume uploaded as an image.

When parsing fails, Greenhouse says the resume is only attached to the candidate and the recruiter must type your details into the fields. That doesn't reject you. It does mean your profile depends on the recruiter's patience. Greenhouse also has a support article on parsing resumes in languages other than English. I did not confirm its details.

Lever: what I could confirm

Lever's help center pages did not load in my check, so I can't quote its parsing rules, file limits or form behavior. Lever's own site says:

• AI ranks candidates by fit and surfaces the best-fit candidates first.
• Recommendations come with context, and recruiters stay in charge of the decision.

Treat anything else you see about Lever's internals, including on blogs, as unconfirmed. The safe move is the same as for Greenhouse: a plain file, plain headings, true content.

A resume layout that parses on both

• One column. No tables for layout.
• Name, email, phone and city in the body text at the top. Keep it out of any header or footer.
• Standard headings: Experience, Education, Skills.
• Each job: title, company with its full name, city, dates in one format.
• Job titles spelled the way the company uses them. If your internal title was odd, add the common one: "Account Executive (Enterprise Sales)".
• Selectable text. Open the PDF and try to select a sentence. If you can't, it's an image.
• No photos, icons, skill bars or word art.
• Exported from a word processor, with no screenshots, and kept small.

Use the posting's own words for skills you have. If it says "SQL" and you write "database querying", you've made the match harder for no gain.

Application questions

Forms add questions on top of the resume. A few habits help:

• Answer every required field, even where the answer is short.
• Stay consistent. If the form says you're authorized to work and your resume says otherwise, you've created a problem.
• For salary, give a range you can defend, or follow the form's instruction.
• For free-text questions, write two or three specific sentences. Name what you did and skip adjectives about yourself.
• Check that your links open in a private window.

Avoid test text in any field. Greenhouse rejects obvious placeholders in resumes, and it's a good habit for forms too.

Check your own parse

Paste your resume text into a plain text editor. If the order jumbles, columns or boxes are the cause. Then apply to a low-stakes posting and look at the confirmation. If the form offers an autofill from resume step, see what appears in each field and correct what's wrong before you submit.

Where Salvo fits

Salvo is a free-to-start AI app that finds jobs that fit your written rules, rewrites your resume for each job, applies for you and preps you for each interview. It submits the application itself on Greenhouse, Workable and Ashby today, so on Greenhouse postings you don't fill the form by hand, and you get a submission receipt. See how Salvo applies for the steps and receipts for what it saves. Lever postings aren't on that list yet, so for those you'd apply manually using the tips above.

The advice here holds with or without Salvo. A resume that parses well puts a better profile in front of the recruiter whichever way you apply.

What to do next

Run your resume through the layout list above and re-export it as a text-based file. If you want applications sent for you on Greenhouse, start with Salvo. It's free to start, no card, and your first 2 interview requests are free. For a volume plan, see how to apply to 100 jobs a week. Ready now? Sign up here.

Sources

• Greenhouse support, "Unsuccessful resume parse", as of 2026-10-05: https://support.greenhouse.io/hc/en-us/articles/200989175-Unsuccessful-resume-parse
• Greenhouse support, Resumes section: https://support.greenhouse.io/hc/en-us/sections/360000690451-Resumes
• Lever: https://www.lever.co/

Related

• How to Pass ATS Filters on Workday and BambooHR
• How to Apply to 100 Jobs a Week
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