How to Write a Resume That Gets Past ATS Filters

When you apply online, your resume often goes through an applicant tracking system, or ATS, before anyone reads it. What these systems do is simpler than the anxious advice suggests, and a resume that suits them also suits a busy recruiter.

What an ATS actually does

An ATS is the database a company runs its hiring from. When you upload your resume, two things usually happen.

It gets parsed. The software reads the text of your file and tries to copy pieces of it into fields: name, email, phone, job titles, employers, dates, education and skills. Greenhouse, for example, lists the data it extracts for its matching feature as "skills, job titles, years of experience, start/end dates of employment, and company names" (Greenhouse Support). If a date lands in the wrong field or a job disappears, the recruiter sees a messy profile.

It gets searched. Recruiters filter and search applications for the words that matter to the role. Greenhouse's own help pages describe searching "the full text of resumes" and note that, for that search, "the keyword from your search must exactly match the keyword in the application" (Greenhouse Support). If the ad says "project management" and your resume only says "coordinated projects", you may not show up.

The robot rejection myth

You will often see a precise percentage of resumes that are supposedly "rejected by ATS" before a human sees them. Treat such figures with caution: they are rarely linked to research you can actually read.

What the vendors document is more modest. Greenhouse states that its AI matching has "no mechanism that automatically takes action to advance or reject a candidate" (Greenhouse Support). Automatic rejections do exist, but they are usually tied to the screening questions on the form, not to your resume. Greenhouse, for example, lets employers auto-reject based on answers to yes/no or multiple-choice questions (Greenhouse Support). So answer questions like "Do you have the right to work in this country?" carefully and truthfully; they matter more than fonts.

Every employer configures its system differently, so the practical aim is simply this: make your resume easy to parse, easy to find and easy to read.

Layout rules that parse reliably

Parsers read text in order, top to bottom. Anything that breaks that order or hides text from it is a risk.

• Use one column. Two-column designs look neat, but a parser may read across both columns line by line and mix your skills into your job history.
• Use plain section names. "Experience", "Education" and "Skills" are what parsers expect; "Where I've made an impact" is not.
• Keep text out of images. A skills chart, a logo with your name in it or a screenshot of a certificate contains no readable text.
• Avoid text boxes, and keep contact details out of the page header and footer. Some systems skip those areas, and your email address is the one thing you cannot afford to lose.
• Write dates the same way throughout, for example "Mar 2022 – Present" for every role.
• Stick to common fonts and ordinary bullet points. Decorative symbols can turn into gibberish when extracted.

A real text PDF, not a scan

A PDF can hold real text or just a picture of a page. If you printed your resume and scanned it, or took a photo of it, the file is an image, and a parser gets nothing from it.

The quick test: open the PDF and try to select a sentence with your cursor, then copy it into a notepad. If the text highlights word by word and pastes correctly, it is real text. If you can only draw a box over the page, or the paste comes out garbled, rebuild the file from the original document.

Match the job ad honestly

Because recruiters search for specific words, your resume should use the same terms as the job ad for skills you genuinely have.

1. Collect the ad's key terms. Paste the job description into the word counter. Its "most used words" list shows the ten words the ad repeats most, ignoring filler like "the" and "and". Tools, qualifications and job titles that come up several times are usually the ones the recruiter will search for.
2. Compare with your resume. Paste your own resume text in afterwards and see which of those terms are missing.
3. Use their wording where it is true. If you have done "stakeholder management" but called it "working with partners", switch to their phrase. Write out an abbreviation once alongside the short form, such as "search engine optimisation (SEO)", since a search might use either.
4. Put the terms where they carry weight: in bullet points that show what you did with that skill, plus a short skills section.

Two things to avoid:

• Keyword stuffing. A skills section with forty buzzwords, or the same phrase in every bullet, reads badly to the human who opens your profile next. Search gets you found; the recruiter still decides.
• Hidden white text. Pasting the whole job ad in white font is an old trick that backfires. The parsed text has no colour, so anyone viewing the extracted content sees the pasted ad in full, and it looks like what it is.

Never add a skill or qualification you don't have. It may pass a search and then fail the interview, or a background check.

PDF or Word file?

Follow the employer's instructions. If the application page asks for a .docx, send a .docx; if it asks for a PDF, send a PDF. When it accepts either, a text-based PDF keeps your layout exactly as you designed it, while a Word file can shift slightly depending on the software used to open it.

If you wrote your resume in Word and need a PDF, the Word to PDF converter turns a .docx into a PDF with selectable text in your browser. It rebuilds the content rather than running Word, so text boxes, columns, headers and footers may come out differently. A plain, single-column resume converts well; check the preview before saving.

Name the file clearly, such as Maria-Lopez-resume.pdf, not resume-final-v3.pdf.

How long should it be?

There is no universal rule, but these are sensible starting points:

Some employers set hard limits. Since 27 September 2025, for example, USAJOBS, the US federal jobs site, only accepts resumes of two pages or less (OPM applicant guidance). Always check the ad.

Length matters more to the recruiter than to the software, so cut anything that doesn't support this particular job.

Photos and personal details

Whether to include a photo depends on the country and the industry. In some places it is expected; in others it is usually left off. Follow the job ad and local practice, and if you're unsure, leave it off.

The same goes for other personal details. The UK's National Careers Service, for instance, advises that you should not include your age, date of birth, marital status or nationality on a CV (National Careers Service). Other countries have different conventions, so check local guidance.

Building a resume with these rules built in

If you'd rather not fight a word processor, the resume builder follows the layout rules above by design. All three templates (Classic, Modern and Compact) are one column with standard headings such as Summary, Experience, Education and Skills, and the PDF it produces contains real, selectable text rather than an image. You can reorder sections, choose A4 or US Letter paper, and see each page break in the live preview.

A few things worth knowing:

• Your data stays in your browser. The form saves itself to this browser's storage as you type, and nothing is sent to a server. Clearing your browser data wipes it, so press Export JSON backup now and then for a spare copy.
• The photo is off by default, and you can switch it on where a photo is expected.
• Latin script only in the PDF. English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Indonesian work, including accented letters. Other writing systems, for example Urdu, Arabic, Hindi or Chinese, can go missing from the downloaded file, so keep those parts in a Latin-script language.

Proofread before you apply

• Read the PDF itself, not the draft, slowly and out loud.
• Check your email, phone number and links by actually using them.
• Copy the PDF's text into a plain notepad to confirm it reads in the right order.
• Look at the fields the application form fills in from your resume, and correct anything that landed in the wrong place.
• Save one tailored version per application, so you know exactly what each employer received.

Get those basics right and most of the ATS advice you'll read becomes unnecessary: a clear, honest, well-structured resume is what both the software and the person behind it are looking for.