Does ATS Read Columns? Why Your Two-Column Resume is Failing

You found a beautiful, modern resume template on Canva or Novoresume. It has a sleek sidebar on the left for your skills and contact info, and a wide main column on the right for your experience. It looks fantastic to the human eye.

But then you upload it to a company portal, and you never hear back. The culprit? Your columns.

Here is the honest truth about how Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) handle columns, and why your highly-designed resume might be destroying your chances before a human ever sees it.

How an ATS Parses Text

Applicant Tracking Systems like Workday, Taleo, and iCIMS are designed to strip the design out of your resume and convert it into plain text data. They do this by reading the document from left-to-right, top-to-bottom.

They are not humans. They do not possess spatial awareness. They do not understand that the narrow left column is meant to be read separately from the wide right column.

The "Mash-Up" Problem

When a standard ATS parses a two-column resume, it draws an invisible horizontal line across the page. It reads the word on the far left, and then immediately reads the word on the far right, mashing them together into a single, incomprehensible sentence.

For example, let's say your left column lists a skill: "Data Analysis". Directly across from it in the right column, your experience bullet says: "Managed a team of 12 engineers."

When the ATS reads left-to-right, the parsed output looks like this:

Data Analysis Managed a team of 12 engineers.

The ATS now thinks you have a skill called "Data Analysis Managed" and your bullet point makes no sense. As a result, you fail the keyword match, your experience dates get scrambled, and your profile is auto-ranked in the bottom tier of candidates.

But what about newer, AI-powered ATS platforms?

It is true that some modern, AI-driven parsing engines (like certain integrations in Greenhouse or modern versions of Lever) have gotten better at handling spatial formatting and text boxes. However, as a job applicant, you never know which ATS the company is using.

If you apply to 50 jobs, you are almost guaranteed to encounter legacy systems that will completely butcher your two-column format. You are playing Russian Roulette with your career by using a format that only works 40% of the time.

The Solution: Single Column Logic

If you are handing your resume directly to a human at a networking event, a two-column design is fine. But for online applications, you must use a standard, single-column layout.

• Remove all sidebars.
• Do not use text boxes. (ATS parsers often skip text boxes entirely, meaning your skills section might just disappear.)
• Use standard margins. Let the text flow naturally from top to bottom.