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In a test reported by ResuHive, one of six open-source resume PDFs produced no Arabic numerals when its text was extracted—even though the numbers were visible on the rendered page. The file was the Deedy Chinese edition: its extracted text contained 1,709 characters and zero digits. That is evidence of a failure in one PDF and one parsing workflow, not proof that all applicant tracking systems mishandle the template or that two-column resumes are inherently unsafe.
What the six-template test found
ResuHive says it processed six PDFs with the same extraction library and call used by its resume-upload workflow, then applied the rules behind its free ATS check. The parsing run was dated September 14, 2026. The publisher identifies the audit script as scripts/ats-template-audit.ts and says each template’s source, license, and commit were recorded with the files. The available report does not expose enough detail to independently inspect the exact files, commits, or parser version.
The names, licenses, layouts, and digit counts below are the publisher’s reported results from that run; they have not been independently reproduced.
| Template | Reported layout | Reported license | Digits recovered |
|---|---|---|---|
| sb2nov | Single column | MIT | 76 |
| Awesome-CV (resume) | Single column | LPPL-1.3c | 255 |
| Awesome-CV (cv) | Single column | LPPL-1.3c | 453 |
| Deedy | Two column | Apache-2.0 | 158 |
| zheyuye (Chinese) | Single column | MIT | 69 |
| Deedy Chinese edition | Two column | Apache-2.0 | 0 |
The other five files yielded between 69 and 453 digits in the same reported run. Counts depend on the content in each sample, so they are not a score of template quality or a direct comparison of how many numbers a real applicant should expect to have extracted.
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What “lost every digit” means
The PDF’s text layer differed from its appearance
ResuHive reports that the Deedy Chinese edition displayed dates, metrics, and other numbers on the page, but those digits were absent from the extracted text. A person viewing the PDF could see them; software receiving its text layer could not. This distinction matters because an ATS or another document-processing tool may rely on extracted text rather than visual appearance.
Some Chinese characters were encoded as different code points
The report also says the extraction included 69 Kangxi radicals that looked similar to Chinese characters but were distinct Unicode code points. One cited example was the surname appearing as ⾼ (U+2F98) instead of 高 (U+9AD8); the report also describes a radical-form substitution in 工程. Such substitutions can interfere with exact-match searches even when the characters look nearly identical to a reader. The reported example is specific to this file and extraction; it does not establish how frequently this occurs in other PDFs.
Does this show that two-column resumes fail ATS checks?
No. In the same test, the English Deedy two-column PDF passed ResuHive’s layout checks: the email and phone were extracted, contact details appeared near the start, and the report says no lines were flagged for scrambled column bleed. That result is limited to the tested file and workflow. It does not establish that all two-column PDFs work reliably, or that every ATS will read every single-column PDF correctly.
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The test therefore points to a more useful question than “Are columns always bad?”: does the text extracted from your particular exported PDF preserve the content and order that matter? Fonts, export settings, the document’s text layer, and the parser can all affect the result; the report does not isolate which factor caused the Chinese Deedy failure.
How to check whether your resume PDF preserves dates and numbers
- Open the exact PDF you plan to submit in a PDF reader.
- Select the document text, copy it, and paste it into a plain-text destination such as a basic text editor.
- Check dates, measurements, percentages, phone numbers, and other figures against the rendered PDF. Also inspect names and non-Latin characters for substitutions.
- Check the order of contact details and sections. If the resume uses columns, look for text that has been interleaved or placed in an unexpected sequence.
- If important content is missing or altered, try exporting the document again with fonts fully embedded or use a different export path, then repeat the check on the new PDF.
ResuHive recommends checking font embedding or trying another export path when extracted characters disappear. Its report does not independently demonstrate that either remedy fixes every affected file, so verify the actual replacement PDF rather than assuming the change worked.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How to interpret the result
The report is a useful warning that visible PDF content and programmatically extracted text can diverge. It is not a universal ATS compatibility ranking: the test covered six files in one workflow, and the available evidence does not establish a second parser, independent replication, or hiring outcomes. ResuHive also excluded a reported missing-phone flag for the zheyuye sample because its phone string, 13xxx-xxx-xxx, was a deliberate placeholder—not a real phone number. That illustrates why parser flags need to be checked against the sample content rather than treated automatically as template defects.
For a fair comparison of exports, keep the source content and parser constant where possible, and compare whether dates and digits survive, whether Unicode characters remain correct, whether contact details and sections appear in a sensible order, and whether columns interleave. The key takeaway from this run is narrow but important: one tested PDF lost every digit in extracted text, while the tested English two-column PDF passed the publisher’s layout checks. Neither result should be generalized beyond the files and workflow reported.
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