August 2026 · 9 min read

How to Make an ATS-Friendly Resume: Step-by-Step Guide

Most resumes do not fail because of experience. They fail because the applicant tracking system — the ATS that reads and files your application — cannot parse what you uploaded. The good news is that building an ATS-friendly resume is not a dark art. It is a short series of practical choices about format, font, file type, and keywords. This guide walks through each step so you can check your resume yourself, without paying for an “ATS scan.”

Step 1: Start with the right ATS resume format

The safest ATS resume format is a single-column layout. Parsers read documents top to bottom, line by line. A second column — common in modern templates — gets interleaved with the first, so your skills end up mixed into your work history and your contact details land in the middle of a bullet point.

Use clear, standard section headings: Summary, Work Experience, Education, Skills. Avoid creative headings like “My Journey” or “What Drives Me” — the parser does not know where to file them. A clean, linear structure is the foundation of every ATS compliant resume.

Step 2: Choose an ATS-safe font

The best font for ATS is any common, widely installed typeface. Think Calibri, Arial, Georgia, Garamond, or Helvetica. These fonts embed cleanly in PDFs and render the same on every system. Decorative or custom fonts can confuse parsers or fail to render at all on the recruiter’s screen. When in doubt, go boring. Boring is readable. For the full list, the sizes to use, and the ones to avoid, see the best font for a resume.

Step 3: Save your resume as a text-based PDF

A PDF is the default format for most applications, and modern ATS parsers handle text-based PDFs without problems. The critical word is text-based. If your resume is a scanned image, a screenshot, or an exported graphic with a .pdf extension, the parser sees nothing.

To make sure your file is text-based, open it and try to select a sentence with your cursor. If you can select the text, copy it, and paste it somewhere else, your PDF is readable. That is the single most important test for any applicant tracking system resume.

Step 4: Run the 10-second copy-paste test

This is the fastest way to check if your resume will pass a resume scanner:

• Open your final PDF.
• Select all (Ctrl+A on Windows, Cmd+A on Mac).
• Copy and paste into a plain-text editor like Notepad or TextEdit.

If the text appears complete and in the right order — name, contact info, experience, education, skills — your resume is parseable. If sections are scrambled, missing, or fused together, that is exactly what the ATS sees. Fix the layout before anything else.

Step 5: Keep contact details in the body

Headers and footers are unreliable in ATS parsing. Some systems strip them entirely, which means your phone number or email can disappear from your record. Put your contact information in the main body of the document, right under your name. It is a small detail that prevents a big failure.

Step 6: Avoid tables, text boxes, and graphics

Tables, text boxes, and complex graphics are common blind spots for resume parsers. They may look clean to a human eye, but to a parser they are structural traps. Keep every piece of important information in plain body text. If you want visual separation, use whitespace and bold headings — not layout tricks.

The same rule applies to icons for contact details, skill charts, and progress bars. They look nice, but they add no searchable text. Use simple text instead.

Step 7: Match keywords to the job posting

Once your resume parses, the next question is whether a recruiter can find it. Recruiters search the ATS using the same language as the job posting. If the ad asks for “project management,” say “project management” — not just “led teams.” If it asks for “Salesforce,” write “Salesforce,” not “a CRM platform.”

This is honest keyword optimization, not stuffing. Use the exact terms where they are true, spell out acronyms at first use — “Search Engine Optimization (SEO)” — and stop there. After the parser files your resume, a human reads it. A document that reads like a keyword dump gets binned by the human no matter what the parser did.

Step 8: Tailor, don’t rewrite, for every application

You do not need a new resume for every job. You need a five-minute review. Open the posting, highlight the three most repeated skills or tools, and make sure they appear in your resume where you honestly have them. Move the most relevant experience toward the top of your bullets. That small adjustment usually does more than any template change.

Common ATS resume mistakes to avoid

• Creative section titles. Stick to Experience, Education, Skills, Summary.
• Fancy templates with columns. They break the parser’s reading order.
• Embedded images or scanned PDFs. If you cannot select the text, the ATS cannot read it.
• Headers and footers for contact info. Some ATS strip them completely.
• Over-stuffing keywords. It looks manipulative and humans notice immediately.

How we handle ATS-friendly exports

Another CV Maker exports through your browser’s print engine, so every PDF is real, selectable text by default. If you want the safest possible ATS resume template, choose a single-column layout from our template gallery. No tables, no text boxes, no design traps — just a clean document that parses.

What we cannot do is mirror each job posting for you. The keyword half of an ATS friendly CV depends on the specific role you are applying for, and that review is always worth ten minutes of your time.

FAQ

What does ATS-friendly mean?
It means a resume format that an applicant tracking system can parse accurately, with text the recruiter can search and find.

Can a resume be too designed for ATS?
Yes. Multi-column layouts, graphics, tables, and text boxes often confuse parsers. A simpler resume usually performs better.

Is Word or PDF better for ATS?
A text-based PDF is fine for most modern systems. If the job posting asks for a specific format, follow that instruction exactly.

Do I need to pay for an ATS scan?
No. The copy-paste test in this guide shows you exactly what a parser sees. Paid scans can be useful, but they are not required.

What is the easiest way to make my resume ATS-friendly?
Use a single-column layout, standard headings, a common font, a text-based PDF, and language that matches the job posting. Then run the copy-paste test.