"Use a clean modern font" is the most common — and most useless — font advice you'll get for resumes. Modern fonts often fail ATS parsing in ways that aren't visible until your resume becomes a string of boxes inside a recruiter's database. Here's what we found when we tested 12 popular resume fonts across 5 real ATS engines.
How fonts affect ATS parsing
When an Applicant Tracking System converts your resume to plain text, it relies on the font being available in the system's processing environment. Most ATS engines run on Linux servers that have a limited set of pre-installed fonts. If your resume uses a font the server doesn't have, one of three things happens:
- Font substitution succeeds: the server replaces with a similar font, parsing works fine
- Font substitution fails partially: some characters render correctly, others as boxes (□) or question marks (?)
- Font substitution fails completely: the entire resume becomes garbled — your name might extract as "□□□□ □□□□□"
Outcome 2 and 3 are surprisingly common with "modern" fonts. The recruiter never sees the garbled output — they see your candidate profile in their ATS, with key fields blank or filled with junk. Your application gets marked low-priority or auto-rejected.
Test methodology
We took the same resume content and rendered it in 12 different fonts. We then submitted each version to 5 different ATS systems (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, iCIMS, and Taleo) and inspected what each parser extracted. We measured:
- Name extraction: did the ATS correctly identify and extract the candidate name?
- Contact extraction: were email and phone correctly extracted?
- Section detection: did the ATS correctly identify Summary, Experience, Education, Skills as separate sections?
- Character integrity: were all characters preserved (no boxes, question marks, or replacement characters)?
Results: the safe list (use these)
1. Calibri — 5/5 ATS engines passed cleanly
The default font in Microsoft Word for over a decade. Universally available, parses perfectly across every system we tested. Default winner. If you can't decide, use Calibri.
2. Arial — 5/5 passed
Even more ubiquitous than Calibri. Slightly heavier visual weight. Functionally identical performance for ATS purposes.
3. Helvetica — 5/5 passed
The original sans-serif workhorse. Often substituted automatically with Arial on Windows systems where Helvetica isn't installed — substitution is invisible to ATS engines and works fine.
4. Times New Roman — 5/5 passed
The classic serif font. Some recruiters consider it "dated" but ATS engines couldn't care less. Excellent parser compatibility.
5. Garamond — 5/5 passed
The best serif font for resumes — slightly more elegant than Times New Roman without sacrificing parser compatibility. Recommended if you want a serif but want it to look modern.
6. Cambria — 5/5 passed
Microsoft's modern serif. Good substitute for Times New Roman. Available on most systems.
7. Verdana — 5/5 passed
Designed specifically for screen readability. Slightly wider than Arial. Excellent ATS compatibility.
Results: the risky list (avoid these)
Avenir — 2/5 ATS engines failed
Beloved by designers, problematic for ATS. On systems without Avenir installed (most ATS Linux servers), the font substitution often produced character spacing issues that caused word boundary detection failures. "Software Engineer" sometimes extracted as "Softw areEng ineer."
Proxima Nova — 1/5 failed completely, 2/5 had character integrity issues
A web-favorite font that doesn't ship with most operating systems. When unavailable, substitution to Arial usually works — but in 1 of our 5 tests, the ATS rendered the entire resume as numerical character codes. Avoid for ATS submissions.
Montserrat — 3/5 had partial issues
Montserrat is a Google Fonts staple, used in countless resume templates. In ATS testing, ligature characters (fi, fl, ff combinations) frequently rendered as boxes. "Office" became "of?ce" — and the ATS didn't recognize it as the word "office" for keyword matching.
Poppins — 2/5 had ligature issues
Same problem as Montserrat. Beautiful font, problematic ligature handling.
Comic Sans, Papyrus, Brush Script — don't use ever
For obvious aesthetic reasons. But also: ATS often rejects "decorative" fonts as suspicious.
Special cases
Custom-licensed fonts
If you've embedded a custom-licensed font in your PDF (some Adobe fonts work this way), the ATS may extract correctly because the font is embedded in the file itself. But .docx submissions can't embed fonts the same way — they reference them by name. Custom fonts in .docx files almost always cause substitution issues.
Mac users — Helvetica Neue
The default Mac font. When uploaded to ATS engines that run on Linux, gets substituted to Helvetica or Arial. Usually works but occasionally produces letterspacing issues. Stick with plain Helvetica or switch to Arial for ATS submissions.
Resume builders that use web fonts
Some online resume builders (LinkedIn's resume export, Canva, certain Notion templates) use web fonts that aren't included when you download the file. The downloaded resume references a font your local machine renders fine — but the ATS server doesn't have it and substitutes something else. Always preview your downloaded resume on a different machine before submitting.
The character that breaks more resumes than any font
It's not actually a font issue — it's an encoding issue. The "smart quote" (curly apostrophe: ' or ') frequently breaks ATS parsing. Microsoft Word auto-corrects straight quotes (') to curly quotes (' or ') automatically. Some ATS engines render curly quotes as question marks — turning "Don't" into "Don?t" — and breaking keyword matching for any phrase containing them.
Fix: in Word, go to File → Options → Proofing → AutoCorrect Options → AutoFormat as You Type → uncheck "Straight quotes with smart quotes." Then re-save your resume.
Recommended font sizes
- Name (top of page): 16-20pt
- Section headers (PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE, EDUCATION, etc.): 12-14pt
- Job titles within sections: 11-12pt bold
- Body text and bullets: 10-11pt
- Below 10pt: ATS engines parse fine, but human readers may not. Avoid going below 9.5pt.
- Above 12pt: wastes space, looks unprofessional. Save large sizes for the name only.
Quick recommendations for different roles
- Tech / startup roles: Calibri or Arial (clean, modern, universally compatible)
- Finance / consulting / law: Garamond or Times New Roman (signals seriousness)
- Creative roles (when ATS isn't the gatekeeper): still use a safe font for the ATS submission, send your portfolio separately
- Academic positions: Times New Roman or Garamond (industry standard for CVs)
Don't optimize what doesn't matter
Font choice between Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Garamond, and Times New Roman makes essentially zero practical difference in ATS performance. They all pass. Pick whichever looks best to you and move on.
Don't spend hours debating fonts. Spend that time on bullet content, keyword optimization, and parsing structure — those affect ATS outcomes 100x more than font choice.
What you absolutely should NOT do is choose a "designer" font (Avenir, Proxima Nova, Montserrat, Poppins, Lato, Open Sans). They look beautiful in your Word document on your screen. They cause silent failures in ATS engines. Your resume might score 90/100 visually and 30/100 in the parser.
Run a quick test: scan your resume free and see exactly what the ATS extracted. If you see boxes (□), question marks where punctuation should be, or letterspacing oddities — your font is the problem. Switch to one from the safe list and re-scan.