Why does an ATS sometimes miss contact information that is clearly on my resume?

Usually because the details sit somewhere the software does not read well, such as a Word header or footer, a text box, a table cell, an image or a side column. You see a neat resume; the parser sees a stream of text and may lose or misplace whatever is outside the main flow.

Common causes:

• Contact details typed in the document header area.
• An email address or phone number stored as part of an image or icon graphic.
• Contact details in a sidebar that gets read after the work history.
• Unusual characters, such as letters spaced out with extra spaces ("J o h n").
• A phone number split across two lines.

The fix is simple: put your name on the first line of the body, then your email, phone, city and one or two links in plain text directly below it. Then check the auto-filled fields when you apply through an online portal.