On sourcing: Greenhouse documents this publicly, which most ATS vendors do not, so nearly every claim below is vendor-primary and dated — the parsing page was last updated 2 March 2026, the auto-reject page 30 January 2026, the formats page 19 August 2026. What any individual employer switches on is a separate question: auto-reject, AI match scoring and resume anonymisation are all features an employer chooses, and no Greenhouse page states how many of them do. Where a page describes the recruiter's side of the product rather than yours, it is marked as such.
The formats, and the size limit that actually bites
Greenhouse lists its supported candidate uploads as .doc, .docx, .pdf, .rtf and .txt, and says "Candidate uploads can be up to 100 MB" (Greenhouse Support — supported formats). The same five types appear in the developer documentation for its job-board submission endpoint (Greenhouse job board API).
That 100 MB is not the number that matters. On a separate page, Greenhouse states plainly: "Greenhouse Recruiting can't parse resumes larger than 2.5MB." (Greenhouse Support — unsuccessful resume parse). The two limits are forty times apart, and nothing in the upload step tells you which side of the smaller one you landed on.
A normal text-based resume is nowhere near 2.5 MB — a two-page PDF of text is usually well under half a megabyte. Files cross that line when they carry embedded images: a scanned page, a photo, a high-resolution logo, a background graphic. If your resume is heavy, the fix is to remove the images rather than to compress harder, because images are also on the list of things that break the parse outright.
What Greenhouse says breaks a parse
This is the most useful list any ATS vendor publishes about itself. Greenhouse names these as characteristics of resumes that commonly fail to parse (unsuccessful resume parse):
- A resume with spaces between the letters
- Resumes that include graphics, photos, or word art
- Resumes that are uploaded as an image, rather than a document
- Complex resumes with tables, headers, and footers
- Resumes with the name and contact information in the header, footer, or text box
- Resumes that have a columned layout
- Resumes without clear sections and differing formats throughout each section
- Company names that don't include identifying words such as Inc., Co., LTD, or LLC.
- Resumes with incomplete job titles
Two of those deserve emphasis because they are so common in designed templates. Contact details in the header or footer are a frequent default in Word templates, and they are named here specifically. A columned layout is the other — our guide on two-column resumes covers what actually happens to reading order when a parser meets one.
One honest caveat about scope: this page is written for recruiters, and the sentence next to the list describes the recruiter's side — "Greenhouse Recruiting scans an imported resume and auto-fills appropriate fields with information it detects when adding a new candidate or prospect to your account." It is Greenhouse describing its own parser's weaknesses, which is the useful part, but it is not a statement about what happens field-by-field on the public application form. Greenhouse does not publish that breakdown, so neither will we.
Auto-reject is real — and it does not read your resume
Greenhouse does have an automatic rejection feature, and job seekers deserve a straight answer about it. The vendor's definition: "With auto-reject, your organization can set up application rules so that, based on an applicant's answer to a question, they will automatically be rejected as a potential candidate." (Greenhouse Support — auto-reject).
The constraint on the next line is the part that matters, and it dismantles the usual myth: "Auto-reject application rules can only be configured for questions of the following type: Yes / No, Single-select, Multi-select" (same page). Your resume is not a yes/no question. Neither is a free-text field. Structurally, the words in your resume cannot trigger this rule — only your answers to the employer's structured screening questions can.
Greenhouse also notes that "Anyone set up to receive notifications about new candidate applications will not be notified of auto-rejected applicants" — so an auto-rejected application may genuinely never reach a human. That is a reason to answer screening questions carefully and accurately, not a reason to stuff your resume.
Keywords change your order, not your outcome
Greenhouse sells an AI feature called Talent Matching that gives recruiters match scores across five categories — strong, good, partial and limited match, plus "needs manual review" — and shows them your resume "with matched and similar keywords highlighted" against the criteria that employer defined (Greenhouse Support — Talent Matching). Greenhouse states that Site Admins enable it, so it is a setting rather than a universal default.
On whether it can end your application by itself, the vendor is unambiguous: "Talent Matching does not auto-reject or auto-advance any candidate, including candidates in lower match categories or those labeled 'Needs manual review.'" (Talent Matching FAQ). The same page describes an optional opt-out flow an employer can enable, after which a candidate "is labeled 'Needs manual review'" and is not evaluated by the feature.
So the honest version of "keywords matter" is this: on a Greenhouse job with this feature on, the language you share with the posting affects how prominently you appear and in what order — not whether you survive. Which is an argument for using the employer's actual vocabulary where it is true of you, and no argument at all for a keyword list you cannot defend in an interview.
See what your resume is missing — before you apply.
CVder reads the job posting and your resume side by side, then shows the exact terms to add and the formatting a parser would trip on.
What you can get back after you apply
Greenhouse now runs an optional candidate portal, MyGreenhouse, where you can track applications made through it. Three limits are worth knowing before you rely on it: an account is optional and applying does not create one, applications made more than 24 hours before you create the account will not appear, and application status is visible only where the employer has chosen to share it (MyGreenhouse FAQ for candidates).
What the portal is not is a copy of what you submitted. Greenhouse is explicit about where that lives: "The company to which you apply becomes what's called the 'controller' of your personal information in your application. If you want to see the information you provided after you apply, make changes to the information in your application, or have the company delete your information, you should contact that company directly." (MyGreenhouse FAQ).
The practical consequence is the same one as on Workday: keep your own copy of the exact file you sent, because retrieving it later means asking the employer.
- Greenhouse accepts
.doc,.docx,.pdf,.rtfand.txt, up to 100 MB — but does not parse anything over 2.5 MB, so keep the file light and image-free. - Its own docs name columns, tables, header/footer contact details, graphics and image-based files as things that commonly break a parse.
- Auto-reject exists, is configured by the employer, and can only fire on yes/no, single-select and multi-select answers — never on resume text.
- Where AI match scoring is switched on, it ranks and highlights, and does not reject or advance anyone by itself.
- Keep your own copy: to see or change what you submitted, you contact the employer, who is the data controller.
- For the layout and section basics behind a clean parse anywhere, see how to pass an ATS; for the file-type question specifically, see PDF or Word. Applying through Lever works differently again.