Are Canva Resumes ATS-Friendly? (And How to Fix Yours)

3 min read

Canva makes gorgeous resumes. The problem is that the same design features that make them look great are exactly what break Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). So the honest answer to "are Canva resumes ATS-friendly?" is: usually not — but you don't have to throw away your design to fix it.

The short answer

Most Canva resume templates are not ATS-friendly. They lean on text boxes, columns, tables, icons, photos, and graphics — and ATS parsers routinely read those out of order or skip them entirely. Your beautifully arranged experience can land in the recruiter's database as a jumbled mess, or not at all.

Why Canva resumes struggle with ATS

A few specific things trip up the parser:

• Text boxes — Canva positions almost everything in floating text boxes. Parsers often read them in the wrong order (or miss them).
• Two-column layouts — sidebars get interleaved into your job history. (More on this in two-column resumes and ATS.)
• Icons, photos, and skill bars — these carry no readable text, so your "skills" rated as little dots simply vanish.
• No .docx export — Canva exports .pdf, .jpg, or .png, but not Word. JPG/PNG are images with no selectable text at all — the worst case for an ATS.

In short: the visual polish is doing the opposite of what you need when software is reading first.

When a Canva resume is actually fine

It's not always a problem. A Canva resume is reasonable when:

• You're applying to a small company that likely has no ATS.
• You're handing it to someone in person or emailing a specific human.
• You're in a creative/design field where the resume doubles as a portfolio piece.

For everything else — especially online applications at mid-to-large companies — assume an ATS is reading it first.

How to keep the design and pass ATS

You have two clean options:

1. Submit two versions. Keep your pretty Canva PDF for humans and in-person moments, and send a plain, single-column, text-based version through online applications. Recruiters won't mind; ATS parsers will thank you.
2. Convert your Canva resume to an ATS format. Export your Canva resume as a PDF, then run it through ResumeToATS — it pulls out your content and rebuilds it as a clean, single-column document (PDF, Word, and Markdown) that parses reliably. Your wording stays exactly the same; only the breakable formatting goes.

That second option exists precisely for this situation — it's the fastest way to turn a design-tool resume into something an ATS can read, without rebuilding it by hand.

Quick check

Not sure if your Canva export will pass? Open the PDF, select all, copy, and paste it into a plain text document. If it pastes out of order, drops sections, or pastes nothing (because it's an image), an ATS will struggle too. Walk through the full 60-second ATS checklist to be sure, and see why resumes get auto-rejected for the bigger picture.

Bottom line

Canva is a great design tool and a risky ATS tool. If a human is reading, your Canva resume is fine. If software is reading first — which is most online applications — convert it to a clean, single-column, text-based version. You keep the content, lose the parsing problems, and stop getting filtered out for how your resume looks instead of what it says.