How to write an ATS-friendly CV

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is the software an employer uses to collect and sort applications. When you upload your CV, the system reads it and copies what it finds into fields: your name, your contact details, your jobs with their dates, your education. Recruiters then search and filter those fields.

If the system cannot read your CV properly, your application still arrives, but the fields come out empty or scrambled, and a search for the skill you have may not find you. Greenhouse, the system behind many company careers pages, lists what stops its parser: files over 2.5 MB, graphics, photos and word art, CVs uploaded as images, tables, headers and footers, and column layouts (Greenhouse support).

None of the rules below is about tricking software. They are about making your CV easy to read, for a parser and for the person after it.

• Use one column. A parser reads across the page, line by line. With two columns it can stitch a line of your skills onto a line of your job history. Dates and places aligned to the right of a line are fine.
• Put your contact details in the body. Many parsers skip the page header and footer, so an email or phone number that lives only there may never reach the form.
• Drop icons, skill bars and star ratings. An icon in place of the word “Email” or a bar for “Python” carries no text a parser can read. Write the words instead.
• Make sure the text is real text. A scanned page or a CV exported as an image has nothing to read. If you cannot select the words in your PDF, neither can a parser.

Name your sections with the words a parser expects, rather than something clever:

• Summary (or Profile, or Professional Summary)
• Experience (or Work Experience, Professional Experience, Employment History)
• Education
• Skills (or Technical Skills, Key Skills)
• Projects, Certifications, Languages, Volunteer, Awards, Publications, Interests

“My Journey” or “What I Bring” may read well to a person, but a parser does not know where to put them.

For students and graduates, put Education first, then Experience, Projects and Skills. Your degree is your strongest line for now, so it belongs at the top.

• Write each date as month and year: 09/2024 or September 2024.
• For a role you still hold, write Present, not “now” or “today”.
• Avoid seasons (“Summer 2025”) and years on their own (“2023 to 2024”). A parser cannot turn them into a start month and an end month.
• Use one format throughout the CV.

• Start with a verb. “Built”, “Organised”, “Cut”, “Taught”. Not “Responsible for”, “Worked on”, “Helped with” or “Involved in”, which describe a duty rather than a result.
• Add a number where there is one. How many people, how much money, how much time, how many users. Most bullets have one if you look.
• Keep each bullet short. One or two lines. Guap’s checker flags any bullet over 250 characters.
• Leave out “I”, “my” and “we”. CV bullets are written without them.
• Cut the empty phrases. “Team player”, “hard worker”, “results-driven”, “detail-oriented” and “self-starter” tell a reader nothing your bullets should not already show.

• “References available on request.” Employers assume it.
• An objective statement. A short summary of what you offer does the job better than what you are looking for.
• Self-ratings. “Expert in Excel”, “Python 4/5” or a row of stars cannot be checked and are easy to doubt. Show the skill in a bullet instead.
• Links hidden under a word. Print the address in full, such as linkedin.com/in/yourname, so it survives being copied into a form.
• Personal details, depending on the country. In the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland, leave out a photo, date of birth, marital status, nationality, religion and gender. Elsewhere in Europe a photo is still common, so follow what employers in your country expect.

• Use a standard font such as Arial, Calibri, Garamond, Helvetica, Georgia or Times. Decorative and script fonts are harder to read, for a parser and for a person.
• Keep the file small. Greenhouse cannot parse a CV over 2.5 MB, which is easy to pass with large images.
• Name the file after yourself, such as Ana-Pop-CV.pdf, not final_v2.pdf.
• Use the format the posting asks for. If it does not say, a PDF with real text or a Word file both work on most systems.

Two quick checks catch most problems:

1. The paste test. Select all the text in your CV, copy it and paste it into a plain text editor. If sections run into each other, columns merge, or a heading lands in the wrong place, a parser will have the same trouble.
2. The free checker. Guap’s ATS CV checker runs most of the rules on this page against your PDF or Word file, with no account, and does not keep the file. Each rule it fails comes with a fix.

Once your CV reads cleanly, Barista attaches it to application forms for you, in the CV box and not the cover letter one.