Are Canva Resumes ATS Friendly? (The Short Answer Is No)

Canva has become one of the most popular tools for building resumes. The templates look professional, the interface is easy, and the output looks polished. There's just one problem: most Canva resumes score extremely low on ATS compatibility.

The average ATS score for a Canva resume is around 23 out of 100. That means most Canva resumes are filtered out before a human recruiter ever sees them.

Here's exactly why, and what to do about it.

Why Canva Resumes Fail ATS Screening

Multi-column layouts scramble on parsing.

ATS software reads text linearly -- from top to bottom, left to right -- the way a simple text extractor works. When your Canva resume has a two-column layout, the parser reads across both columns simultaneously. Your left column experience and your right column skills get interleaved into incoherent text. The result looks like nonsense to the ATS scoring engine.

Text boxes are invisible or garbled.

Canva places content inside individual text boxes rather than a continuous document flow. Many ATS parsers skip text boxes entirely or extract them out of order. Your contact information, which is often in a header text box, may not be read at all.

Graphics and icons get skipped.

Canva resumes commonly include icons next to contact info, skill ratings as visual bars, decorative dividers, and profile photos. ATS software cannot read images. These elements are either ignored or cause parsing errors that corrupt the surrounding text.

Fonts may not render correctly.

Canva uses custom fonts that are not installed on most systems. When an ATS exports your resume to plain text, these fonts may render incorrectly or not at all.

What Happens When an ATS Reads a Canva Resume

Here is a typical example. A Canva resume with a sidebar containing skills and contact info, and a main column with experience, gets parsed like this:

What the resume shows:

Left column: email, phone, skills (Python, SQL, Excel)

Right column: Senior Analyst at XYZ Corp, 2020-2024

What the ATS reads:

"email phone Senior Analyst Python XYZ Corp SQL 2020 Excel 2024"

The ATS cannot assign this text to the correct sections. Your skills lose their context, your experience loses its structure, and your keyword matches drop dramatically.

Can I Make My Canva Resume ATS Friendly?

Technically yes, but it requires stripping out everything that makes it a Canva resume. You would need to:

• Switch to a single-column layout
• Remove all text boxes and replace them with body text
• Remove all icons, images, and graphic elements
• Remove all colored backgrounds and design elements
• Use a standard font like Arial or Calibri

At that point, you have essentially rebuilt the resume from scratch in a plain format. You might as well use Word or Google Docs directly.

What to Use Instead

For ATS compatibility, use a simple single-column Word or Google Docs resume. No columns, no tables, no graphics. Use bold text for section headers. Use standard section names: Summary, Experience, Education, Skills.

It will look less impressive visually -- but it will get read correctly by every ATS system. The human reviewer only sees your resume after the ATS passes it. Getting through that gate is the priority.

How to Check If Your Current Resume Passes ATS

Paste your resume text into ScoreMyResume along with the job description you're applying to. The checker will show you your actual ATS score across six dimensions, including format readability. If you have a Canva resume, you will see immediately where the format is costing you points.

The score is free and takes about 30 seconds.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do all ATS systems reject Canva resumes?

Not all -- some newer ATS platforms are better at parsing complex layouts. But you cannot know which ATS a company uses, and the cost of a miscommunication is rejection. There is no benefit to risking it with a multi-column layout.

Can I export my Canva resume as a plain text file?

Yes, but the export will preserve the scrambled text order from the parser's perspective. The underlying layout issue is not solved by the file format -- it's solved by redesigning the resume as a single-column document.

What about LinkedIn's resume builder?

LinkedIn's resume builder produces a relatively clean single-column format that parses better than most Canva templates. It is a safer choice for ATS compatibility, though it has limited customization.

Related reading: Can an ATS Resume Have Columns? · Can an ATS Resume Have Color or a Photo? · How to Check Your ATS Resume Score for Free