A resume with no text layer is a blank page

There is no partial credit for this one. If your PDF has no text layer, the parser extracts nothing, and your application arrives as a record with a name field and nothing else.

How resumes end up without text

• Scanned or photographed. A printout run through a scanner produces a picture of words, not words.
• Exported with outlined text. Design tools convert type to vector shapes so fonts render identically everywhere. It also destroys the text.
• Flattened on export. Some “print quality” or “high fidelity” PDF settings rasterise the whole page.
• Saved from a screenshot. More common than you would think, usually when someone rebuilds a resume on a phone.

Do ATS run OCR?

Some do. You should not rely on it. OCR is applied inconsistently, degrades accuracy on stylised layouts, and often runs only on files that fail the primary parse. Even where it works, it returns a flat wall of text with no structural hints, so section detection fails and everything lands in one undifferentiated blob.

The fix

Export a text PDF directly from the tool you wrote it in:

• Word: File → Save As → PDF. Do not use “Print to PDF” on a Mac unless you check the result.
• Google Docs: File → Download → PDF Document.
• Pages: File → Export To → PDF.
• Canva: Download → PDF Standard, and make sure “Flatten PDF” is off.
• Figma / Illustrator: do not outline text before exporting.

How to verify

Open the PDF and try to select a sentence with your cursor. If you can highlight individual words, there is a text layer. If your cursor draws a selection box over the whole page instead, the page is an image.