An ATS-friendly resume should make your experience easy to extract and easy to read. Start with a clear reading order, familiar section headings and a file that contains real text. Then check the document you actually plan to submit.

You do not need to strip every bit of personality from the page. You do need to know whether the layout helps someone understand your work or makes them hunt for it.

What an ATS does with your resume

An applicant tracking system helps an employer manage applications. One part of that workflow can be parsing: extracting information from a resume into fields such as your contact details and employment history. Parsing and deciding whether to hire someone are different steps.

Greenhouse describes cases where a resume is attached to a candidate record even though its information has not been parsed successfully. A parsing problem is therefore not proof of an automatic rejection. It can still leave details missing or require correction. Source: Greenhouse’s explanation of unsuccessful resume parsing.

Your practical goal is to remove avoidable friction. Think about the recruiter who needs to find your most recent role, and the software that needs to associate the right dates with it.

Start with one clear reading order

For an online application, a single-column layout is a sensible starting point. A reader can move from your name to your experience without switching between disconnected areas of the page.

Greenhouse lists columns, complex tables, graphics, and contact details placed in headers, footers or text boxes among possible causes of parsing problems. That is evidence of risk in one system, not a rule that every two-column resume fails everywhere. Source: Greenhouse’s formatting guidance.

Try this order as an initial draft:

  1. Name and contact details.
  2. A short summary, if it adds useful context.
  3. Relevant work experience, with your most recent role first.
  4. Education and relevant qualifications.
  5. Skills, projects or other sections that help explain your fit.

Adjust that sequence when your strongest evidence sits elsewhere. A recent graduate with a substantial relevant project may place education and projects above an unrelated part-time job. The important point is that the order should make sense without a tour of the page.

Use section labels people recognize

“Experience,” “Education,” “Skills” and “Projects” tell a reader what comes next. “My journey” and “What makes me tick” require interpretation before the reader has learned anything about your qualifications.

Keep each role together: job title, employer, dates, then the description. Give dates a consistent format, such as Mar 2023 – Sep 2026. Do not detach them into a floating box at the opposite end of the page.

Spell out an unfamiliar internal job title where you can do so accurately. If your official title was “Customer Champion,” you might write “Customer Champion (customer support)” rather than silently replace it with “Customer Success Manager.” Clarify the work without claiming a different level of responsibility.

Make the typography do a quiet job

Choose readable body text and keep headings consistent. If a paragraph only fits because you made it tiny, cut or rewrite it before reducing the type again. Normal sentence case is easier to maintain than a mix of all caps, decorative lettering and manually spaced characters.

Use a restrained accent color for headings or rules. The page should still be understandable when printed in grayscale. A skill bar that says “Python: 80%” is hard to interpret; a project explaining what you built with Python gives the reader something more useful.

For creative roles, keep the portfolio as a separate destination. The resume can introduce your work and link to it without becoming a collection of screenshots.

Check the exported file, not just the editor

Export a fresh copy and open it. Look for broken page breaks, a heading left alone at the bottom of a page, missing characters and a contact line that no longer fits.

Next, select a passage of text and copy it into a plain-text editor. Does it appear in a sensible sequence? Are the employer names, dates and bullets still attached to the right roles?

This is a useful diagnostic, not a simulation of every ATS. A file can pass a copy-and-paste check and still be interpreted differently by an employer’s software. If the application shows fields filled from your upload, inspect those fields before submitting.

The file extension also matters, but it is only one part of the decision. Our guide to PDF versus Word resumes explains when to use each.

Keep keyword choices tied to your experience

Read the job description for the work, tools and qualifications the employer actually needs. Use their terminology where it accurately describes your background.

For a fictional operations applicant, “Created a weekly stock reconciliation in Excel” communicates more than adding “Excel” repeatedly across the page. If the role asks for SQL and you have only used spreadsheets, adding SQL to your skills does not solve the gap.

Tailoring often means moving relevant evidence into view and removing less useful detail. See how to tailor a resume to a job description for that workflow.

Your pre-application checklist

  • The employer accepts the file type and file size.
  • Your name and contact details are visible in the main content.
  • The page has a clear reading order and recognizable sections.
  • Each job’s title, employer, dates and bullets stay together.
  • Text can be selected and copied from the exported document.
  • Relevant skills appear in context and reflect work you can explain.
  • The exported file has been proofread, including application autofill fields.

If you want a starting check, the free ATS resume checker looks at basic readability, contact details and section structure. Its score is a MorphicID check, not an employer’s rating or a prediction of an interview. Use the findings to fix obvious issues, then read the resume yourself.

Common questions

Does an ATS resume have to be plain black text?

You can use a modest accent color and clear hierarchy. Avoid making meaning depend on color, images or decorative elements. Readability matters more than removing all design.

Is there a universal ATS score I should aim for?

A score from a resume tool reflects that tool’s own checks. It does not certify acceptance by every employer or measure all the reasons a hiring team might select someone. Treat a score as feedback about the checks it actually covers.

Can I use a two-column resume?

Some systems may handle it; others can misread the order or miss details. If you do not know the employer’s system, a single column is a conservative choice. Keep a more visual version for situations where a person has specifically asked to see it.