ATS-friendly resume template
Applicant tracking systems such as Workday, Greenhouse, Taleo and iCIMS turn your resume into fields before a recruiter sees it. This template is laid out the way those parsers expect, so your job titles, dates and skills land in the right boxes.
Templates
- ATS-friendly resume (document): A one-page resume built to pass applicant tracking systems: single column, standard section headings, plain bullets and a keyword-rich skills line that ATS software reads correctly. Use it for any online job application.
- Resume (document): A clean one-page resume with summary, experience, education and skills, ready to fill in and tailor to any job.
How to use these templates
- Open the ATS-friendly resume and paste in the job posting you are applying to, with your current resume or a few lines about your experience.
- Ask the AI to "match the skills line and summary to this posting". It reuses the posting's exact wording where it is true for you.
- Keep the headings as they are: Summary, Skills, Experience, Education, Certifications. Parsers look for those words.
- Download as Word (.docx), or as PDF if the portal asks for one. Both keep real, selectable text.
What ATS parsers need from your resume
- One column, top to bottom. Two-column layouts are often read straight across, which merges a job title on the left with a skill on the right.
- No tables, text boxes, icons or images. Many parsers skip them entirely, so a phone number inside a graphic simply disappears.
- Keep your name and contact details in the body of the page, not in the Word header or footer, which some systems never read.
- Use the same words as the posting. If it says "project management" and "SQL", write those, not "PM" or "databases". Spell out an acronym once: "search engine optimization (SEO)".
- Write dates the same way every time, such as "Jan 2022 – Present", and put each job title on its own line above the company.
- Never hide extra keywords in white text. Recruiters see the parsed plain text, and it reads as stuffing.
Frequently asked questions
Should I upload my resume as PDF or Word for ATS?
Use whatever the portal asks for. When both are allowed, a .docx is the safest for older systems, and a PDF exported from Word or from this editor is fine for modern ones. Avoid scanned PDFs, which contain an image and no text.
Do ATS systems reject resumes automatically?
Most do not reject on their own. They parse, rank and filter, and recruiters search by keyword and job title. A resume that parses badly, or lacks the posting's words, is simply hard to find in that search.
Can I use bold text and bullet points?
Yes. Bold, italics and simple round bullets parse fine. It is layout structure, like columns and tables, that causes trouble, not text formatting.
How do I check what the ATS sees?
Copy all the text from your PDF and paste it into a plain text editor. If it comes out in the right order with nothing missing, a parser will read it correctly too.
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