Often yes, sometimes badly. It depends on the design, not on Canva itself.
Greenhouse, a widely used ATS, publishes a support article on why resume parsing fails. The causes it lists include resumes with graphics, photos or word art, resumes uploaded as an image instead of a document, complex layouts with tables, headers and footers, words written with spaces between the letters, and files larger than 2.5 MB. When parsing fails, the resume is still attached, but the recruiter has to type your details in by hand.
Columbia University's Center for Career Education gives similar advice to students: use simple formatting and standard section headings, and avoid tables, columns, boxes, borders, shading and fancy fonts.
Many design-led templates use exactly those elements: sidebars, icons, skill bars, letter-spaced headings and photo frames. That doesn't mean every Canva resume fails. A clean, single-column Canva design with real text can parse well. It means the more decorative the layout, the more you should test it.
A two-minute test for any resume PDF
- Open your downloaded PDF and select all the text.
- Paste it into a plain text editor.
- Check that your name, contact details, job titles, dates and bullet points appear in a sensible order.
- If text is missing, jumbled or can't be selected at all, an ATS will struggle too.
If your resume will mostly go through online application portals, a structured builder removes this guesswork. Our guide on making a resume ATS-friendly covers the details.