How Lever reads your resume
Lever documents its resume intake plainly. Its help centre gives a size limit, lists the formats its parser can read, and says outright that it cannot read images. It also names the situations where nothing gets pre-filled at all, and those depend on how the employer set Lever up rather than on anything in your file.
Lever is a trademark of its owner. ATSPrep isn't affiliated with it.
Will Lever read your file?
1.5 MB is well inside the published 10 MB limit.
- Made by
- Lever
- Parser
- Not published
- Accepts
- PDF, DOC, DOCX, RTF, TXT
- ATSPrep exports
- PDF accepted, DOCX accepted
What Lever pulls out, and what gets lost.
Your file goes in, Lever fills the fields it recognises, and the line underneath types what its own documentation says goes missing on the way.
What Lever accepts, with sources.
Every line below links to the page it came from. Where Lever does not publish a detail, this guide leaves it out rather than guessing.
Accepted file types
Size limits
Uploads accepted up to 10 MB.
Form autofill
When a resume is parsed, Lever extracts the readable information and fills the matching fields on the candidate profile, including name, organisation and contact details.
If parsing does not work, Lever's documented fallback is to type the information into the profile by hand. A failed parse leaves a thinner record. It is not a rejection.
What ATSPrep exports, and whether Lever takes it
This is computed at build time by comparing our export formats to Lever's published list. It is not written by hand, so it cannot drift out of date.
- PDFATSPrep exportAccepted by Lever
- DOCXATSPrep exportAccepted by Lever
Lever takes both, so the choice is yours. PDF or DOCX: a simple rule for picking
What trips people up on Lever
The resume limit is 10 MB
Lever's help centre states that the maximum resume file size that can be uploaded is 10 MB. A text-based resume is a small fraction of that. A file near the limit almost always means embedded images, and images are the one thing Lever says it cannot read.
Source: Lever Help Center, adding and deleting resumes · checked Oct 19, 2026Images are never parsed
Lever says it cannot parse information from image files such as JPG or PNG. Its own test is simple: if you cannot highlight the text in the document with your cursor, the document is probably not parseable. A scanned PDF fails that test.
Source: Lever Help Center, understanding resume parsing · checked Oct 19, 2026The parse list is not the upload list
The uploader names .doc, .docx, .pdf and .txt as examples of what it takes. The list of formats Lever can parse is Word, PDF, Rich Text (RTF), WordPerfect, HTML, MS Office HTML and OpenDocument. Plain text is not on it, so PDF or DOCX is the safer choice.
Source: Lever Help Center, understanding resume parsing · checked Oct 19, 2026Employer-hosted forms do not pre-fill
Lever lists six ways an employer can run its careers site. In five of them the application is hosted by Lever and resumes are auto-parsed to pre-populate the form. In the sixth, where the employer builds its own application form on Lever's API, Lever states that auto-parsing to pre-populate applications is not supported.
Source: Lever Help Center, Lever career site options · checked Oct 19, 2026Some employers skip the email address
Lever has a setting called Skip email address parsing. When an employer turns it on, the email field on profiles created from applications is left empty and filled in by hand. Everything else is still parsed. The email you type into the form is the one that counts.
Source: Lever Help Center, configure your Lever-hosted job site · checked Oct 19, 2026A region becomes the nearest city
If a resume gives a region rather than a legally recognised city, such as New York Metropolitan Area, Lever's parser matches it to the closest structured location, and Lever notes this can attribute the wrong location. Where a job board passes its own location answer, that answer replaces the parsed one.
Source: Lever Help Center, understanding resume parsing · checked Oct 19, 2026Every interviewer can open your resume
Lever treats resumes as documents for everyone involved in the hiring. They are visible to all of the candidate's followers and to the interviewers on the interview plan. Whatever is in the file, every person on the panel can read it.
Source: Lever Help Center, adding and deleting resumes · checked Oct 19, 2026
Formatting for Lever
Go through your file before you apply and tick each one off. Your ticks stay in this browser, so the list is still here for the next Lever job.
Open the file and try to select a line. If you cannot, Lever cannot read it either. Export again from the document itself rather than scanning or printing to an image.
Both are on Lever's parse list. Plain text uploads, but it is not on that list, so there is no reason to take the risk.
A plain resume is usually well under 1 MB. If yours is larger, look for a photo, a background image or embedded fonts and remove them.
Put the actual city you live in. A metropolitan area or a broad region gets matched to the nearest city on Lever's list, and it may not be the one you meant.
Some employers' forms are not pre-filled and some skip the email address. Check every field on the application and type in anything that is missing.
All five checked. Good luck with this one.
Once it's sent, add the job to your tracker. You'll know which version went where, and when a follow-up is fair.
Read your resume back before Lever does.
Guidance is worth less than evidence. Export a PDF from the Studio and the X-Ray re-opens that exact file and shows you the text a parser recovers from it, in reading order, with anything it dropped marked.
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Lever and your resume
- What is Lever?
- Lever is an applicant tracking system that employers use to post jobs, collect applications and manage candidates.
- How do I know if an employer uses Lever?
- Most Lever applications sit on a jobs.lever.co address, followed by the company name, for example jobs.lever.co/company/…/apply. Some employers embed Lever's job list in their own careers site, so the application page is the place to check.
- Does Lever read PDF resumes?
- Yes. Adobe PDF is on Lever's list of formats it can parse, as long as the PDF holds real text. Lever says it cannot parse images, so a scanned PDF will not fill any fields.
- What file types does Lever accept for a resume?
- Lever's uploader names .doc, .docx, .pdf and .txt as common types it supports. The formats it can parse are Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, Rich Text (RTF), Corel WordPerfect, HTML, MS Office HTML and OpenDocument. Image files such as JPG or PNG cannot be parsed.
- What is the Lever resume size limit?
- 10 MB. Lever's help centre states that the maximum resume file size you can upload is 10 MB.
- Why did my resume fail to parse in Lever?
- Lever names the causes. The file is an image or a scan, with no text you can highlight. The resume was imported by email or through the Lever Chrome extension. The candidate was added through Lever's API. Or the employer runs its own application form, which Lever says does not auto-parse. Lever does not publish a list of layout problems that break its parser.
- Does a failed parse mean Lever rejected my application?
- No. Lever's documented fallback is to type the information into the candidate profile by hand. The parse affects how complete your record is, not whether the application was received.
How the rest of them read a resume
- iCIMSiCIMS extracts text from PDF, Word, RTF, plain text, HTML and OpenDocument resumes by default and fills profile fields from the file you upload. It does not publish a resume size limit.10 file types
- JazzHRJazzHR takes PDF, DOC, DOCX, RTF, ODT and TXT resumes up to 5 MB. Its own support docs say a scanned resume is treated as an image: no name, no email, nothing searchable.6 file types
- Breezy HRBreezy HR takes DOC, DOCX, Pages, PDF, RTF and TXT resumes. Its docs say a scanned resume, or one in an unsupported language, is not parsed, and its AI review tools skip any resume that wasn't.6 file types
- PersonioPersonio parses PDF and DOCX CVs with Textkernel, if the employer has opted in. Its own help centre lists ten reasons a parse fails, from headers and tables to 8 pt text and skill bar charts.2 file types · Textkernel
Start from an example that Lever can read.
Each one is a single-column document, scored by the same checks the Studio runs.