ATS-friendly resume template that recruiters can read

Why ATS compatibility matters

At large companies, staffing agencies and a growing number of small businesses, your resume isn’t read by a person first, but by an applicant tracking system, or ATS. It extracts the text from your file, fills in a candidate profile and lets the recruiter search by keyword. A resume that’s misread, with jumbled dates or a lost job title, may never show up in the results, even with an excellent profile.

What makes a resume readable by software

All our templates follow these rules by design: you don’t have to think about them while filling in your resume.

The pitfalls of overly graphic resumes

• Text in images: common in resumes exported from some design tools, and invisible to the software.
• Icons instead of words: a phone icon without the word “Phone” can be misinterpreted.
• Rating bars without names: a level bar conveys no information to the software.
• Complex tables: nested cells can scramble the reading order.
• Headers and footers: some systems ignore their content, contact details included.

Keywords: the part you control

Technical compatibility is handled by the template. Keywords are up to you. Before each application, reread the job posting and note the skills, software, degrees and job titles it asks for. Use them word for word in your resume where they match your experience: in the title, the summary and your skills. Duplicate your resume for each type of role and adjust these three elements in a few minutes.

The copy-paste test

Once your PDF is downloaded, open it, select all the text and paste it into a plain text editor. Your name, roles, dates and skills should appear clearly, in order. That’s exactly what an applicant tracking system sees. With our templates, this test always passes.