Free CV checker: see what the software sees
Before a person reads your CV, a system reads it. Upload yours and we will show you how it comes out the other side. It takes a few seconds, there is no account and no card, and we check how the file is built - we do not score you.
What it checks, and why each one matters
Six things, all about how the file is built rather than what it says. These are the failures that make a CV unreadable to software while looking perfect to you.
Columns
The commonest serious problem. Parsers read a page in one pass, so a sidebar can land in the middle of a sentence from the main column - your degree spliced into a job description.
Tables
A table looks tidy and can read as one long line, or as nothing at all. Dates and job titles laid out in cells are what most often goes missing.
Text boxes
Text inside a box is frequently skipped. People put their profile or their contact details in one, which makes it the worst thing on the page to lose.
Headers and footers
Some parsers never read them. A phone number that appears only in the header can be the reason nobody rings.
Images
Anything drawn rather than typed is invisible - a skills chart, an icon standing in for a word. A CV exported as one big image parses as an empty document.
Fonts
An unusual font can embed without the character map a parser needs, and the text comes out as nonsense. The safe list is dull on purpose.
What an applicant tracking system actually does
You will read that most CVs are rejected by the software before a human sees them. That is not how the common systems work, and the percentage usually quoted next to it has no source worth citing.
What happens is duller and more fixable. The system reads your file, pulls out what it can - name, contact details, employers, dates, education - and files the rest as searchable text. A recruiter then searches and sorts. Very little is discarded automatically.
So the damage is not rejection. It is a CV that arrives with the email missing, the dates scrambled or the experience stored as one unsearchable block, and then loses to a weaker candidate whose file parsed cleanly.
We know how these behave first-hand rather than from advice about them: our browser extension fills applications on Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, SmartRecruiters, Workable and Teamtailor.
What this cannot tell you
It checks the plumbing, not the writing. A perfectly parseable CV can still say nothing an employer wants. It will not tell you that your experience reads thin, that your profile sounds like everyone else's, or that you have left off the skill the advert asked for twice.
For that half, we counted what 12,914 live UK graduate adverts actually ask for, on 5 November 2026: the skills employers name most, and how often each one appears.
Or check it directly: paste your CV and see which of those skills it names. Also free, and nothing is uploaded.
Also worth reading: how long a graduate CV should be and what to put on one with no experience.
Free, and staying that way
No account, no card, no email address. Your file is read to run the checks and is not shared with anyone. If you would rather not upload anything, every check above is something you can look for yourself - the list is the whole method.
What Premium adds is the part this page deliberately does not do: rewriting your CV against a specific advert, and an extension that fills the application form on the employer's own site.
What you get for applying through Gradovio
Matched to your CV
Up to 50 roles a week picked for what you studied and where you'll work, with a score for each.
A CV written for each advert
A tailored CV and cover letter against that specific job, plus answers to its application questions.
The form filled for you
The browser extension fills the application on the employer's own site. About 3 minutes instead of 30.