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ATS resume

How to make an ATS-friendly resume

Most companies run applications through an applicant tracking system (ATS) such as Greenhouse, Lever, Workday or SmartRecruiters. The ATS turns your resume into text, files it, and lets recruiters search and rank candidates.

If the system can't read your resume properly, your experience lands in the wrong fields or disappears. An ATS-friendly resume is simply one that turns into clean, correctly ordered text.

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ATS resume formatting rules

  • One column for strict systems. Sidebars and tables can be read out of order.
  • Standard section headings: Summary, Experience, Projects, Education, Skills.
  • Real text, not images of text. No skills shown only as icons or charts.
  • Common fonts at 10 to 12 points, and dates in a consistent format.
  • Contact details in the body of the page, not only in the header or footer.
  • PDF with selectable text, or Word when the portal asks for it.

Keywords matter more than design

Recruiters search the ATS for skills and job titles. If the posting asks for "PostgreSQL" and your resume only says "databases", you may not come up. Use the posting's exact terms for things you have really done.

OneProfile shows, for every resume, which keywords from the posting it covers with evidence from your profile, and which ones you have no evidence for yet, so you can see the gaps before you apply.

ATS-friendly templates

OneProfile has 8 single-column templates marked ATS-friendly, plus 8 with a sidebar and colour for when a person reads it first. Every template produces real, selectable text, and the resume is set to fill exactly one or two pages.

How an applicant tracking system reads your resume

  1. 1

    It extracts the text

    The ATS turns your PDF or Word file into plain text. Anything that isn't real text, like a skill bar or a logo, is lost.

  2. 2

    It splits it into fields

    It looks for headings it knows (Experience, Education, Skills) and files what follows under each, with job titles, companies and dates.

  3. 3

    Recruiters search and rank

    A recruiter searches for skills and titles, or the system scores each application against the posting. Resumes that use the posting's terms rise to the top.

  4. 4

    A person reads the shortlist

    Only then does someone read your resume, usually for a few seconds at first, so the most relevant work has to be at the top.

ATS myths worth ignoring

  • "You need a 90% match score." There is no universal score; recruiters mostly search and filter.
  • "Hide keywords in white text." Systems strip formatting, recruiters see it, and it looks dishonest.
  • "PDFs can't be read." Text-based PDFs are read fine by modern systems.
  • "Any design gets you rejected." Colour is fine; what breaks parsing is multi-column layouts, tables and text in images.

Check your resume before you apply

  1. 1

    Copy all the text

    Open your PDF, select everything and paste it into a plain text editor.

  2. 2

    Read it top to bottom

    If sections come out in the wrong order, or words are missing or run together, an ATS will struggle too.

  3. 3

    Search for the posting's key terms

    Look for the five or six most important skills and titles from the job description, spelled the way the posting spells them.

Questions

Is a PDF resume ATS-friendly?

Yes, when the PDF has real, selectable text, as OneProfile's do. Some older portals ask for Word; OneProfile gives you a .docx too.

Do ATS systems reject resumes automatically?

Mostly they rank and filter rather than reject, but a resume that reads badly or lacks the posting's key terms ranks low and is rarely opened.

Can I use a two-column resume?

For applications a person reads first, yes. For large companies with strict systems, a single-column template is the safer choice.

Try it on the next job you apply for.

Make an ATS-friendly resume free