How to format, keyword-optimize, and export your resume so applicant tracking systems pass it to a human recruiter.
By Priya Anand · ATS & Hiring-Tech Analyst · Updated 2026-06-04
Workday and Greenhouse implementation specialist who advises Fortune 500 talent teams on ATS parsing and resume formatting.
Over 95% of Fortune 500 companies and most mid-size employers screen resumes with an applicant tracking system (ATS) before a human ever sees them. This guide gives you every tip that actually moves the needle. For the bigger picture, see the complete resume writing guide.
When you upload a resume, the ATS parses the file into structured fields — name, contact, experience, education, skills. It then ranks your application against the job description's keywords. Recruiters search and filter on that structured data, and only candidates in the top results get a human review.
Single-column layout, standard section labels (Experience, Education, Skills), parser-safe fonts (Arial, Helvetica, Inter, Calibri), and no text trapped inside graphics. Two-column templates with sidebars and tables routinely scramble parsing — use them only if you've verified the export. The Society for Human Resource Management's overview of applicant tracking systems explains why HR teams configure parsers this strictly. Every resume template in our library is tested against the major ATS engines.
Read the posting and 3–5 similar postings. Highlight every named tool, methodology, and skill. Weave them naturally into your summary, skills block, and experience bullets — not as a hidden block, which most ATS systems flag and penalize. The Jobscan blog publishes regular teardowns of how the major ATS platforms tokenize and rank keywords if you want to go deeper.
Call them what the ATS expects: 'Experience' (not 'Where I've Worked'), 'Education' (not 'Academics'), 'Skills' (not 'What I Do'). Cute headings break parsing and lose you the keyword match.
Modern ATS systems handle PDFs well — as long as the file contains selectable text and not a flattened image. Open your exported PDF and try to highlight a word; if you can, the ATS can too. Use a builder that exports text-based PDFs by default like our ATS-friendly resume builder.
Score your draft against any ATS Paste a job description and our builder highlights every missing keyword — free.
Many ATS parsers don't read content from the Word/PDF header region. Put your phone, email, and LinkedIn inside the document body itself — under your name at the top of the page.
Some recruiters search for 'Search Engine Optimization', others for 'SEO'. Spell out each major acronym on first use — 'Search Engine Optimization (SEO)' — to capture both queries.
Decorative icons next to section headings are usually fine. Skill bars, star ratings, and any text inside graphics are not — they don't parse and they waste line space that should hold real keywords. More on what to include in the resume skills section guide.
A generic resume that ranks 12th in the ATS queue never makes it to a recruiter. A tailored resume that ranks 2nd routinely does. Tailoring takes ten minutes per application when you start from a strong base template; full process in the pillar guide.
Before submitting, save your file and re-open it. Does every section heading render? Are dates aligned? Is there a phantom second page from a stray paragraph break? These tiny rendering glitches lose interviews — fix them in your editor before exporting again, or use the live preview in our free resume builder to catch them as you type.
Most do — over 95% of Fortune 500 companies and the majority of mid-size employers. Small businesses and tiny startups sometimes still review applications manually.
Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Taleo, iCIMS, and SmartRecruiters dominate. Their parsing behavior is similar — the tips here apply to all of them.
No — the ATS only parses what you upload. Keep both in sync, but don't rely on LinkedIn to fill gaps in your resume.
No — modern ATS systems flag obvious stuffing and penalize the application. Use keywords naturally inside real bullets and skill entries.