ATS Resume Guide

ATS Resume: How to Make One That Gets Read

An ATS resume is a resume that an applicant tracking system can read into the right fields and a recruiter can skim fast. Use a single-column layout, plain headings, real text in a PDF or Word file, contact details in the body, and wording taken honestly from the job post. Each rule below says which vendor it comes from.

You will also see this called an ATS friendly resume, a resume for ATS or an ATS compliant resume. They mean the same thing here. We found no vendor that publishes a compliance standard for resumes, so "compliant" has no official test behind it.

How we sourced the rules

Most ATS advice online has no source. For this page we read the help pages of the vendors themselves and say "according to" each one. A vendor's behaviour is never presented as how all systems work, because that is not documented. Where we found no source, the text says it is common practice without data.

We read documentation from Greenhouse, Ashby, Workday and iCIMS. We could not read Lever's help page (it did not load for us), and we found no official page for SmartRecruiters on this topic. Their behaviour is Unknown to us.

Step 1: Start with a plain, single-column layout

Greenhouse reads your file into fields for the candidate record. Its help page on failed parsing (Greenhouse Support, updated March 2, 2026) lists several cases, including:

When a parse fails in Greenhouse, the same page says the resume is only attached to the candidate and the recruiter has to enter the details by hand. The resume is not discarded. A person can still open it, and that person has more work to do.

So the safe layout is one column, normal paragraphs and bullets, and no text inside boxes, tables or images. That is our inference from Greenhouse's list, which names a columned layout. We read no vendor page on fonts, so plain fonts are common practice without data, and how other systems treat columns is Unknown to us. The resume format for ATS guide covers the layout rules in detail.

Step 2: Send a file the system can read

Check the job post first. If it names a file type, use that one. If it does not, a PDF or a Word file is the usual choice, and the vendors we read support both.

According to Greenhouse's candidate FAQ, "Upload a PDF for best results." (Greenhouse Support, updated November 2, 2026). Greenhouse lists .doc, .docx, .pdf, .rtf and .txt as supported formats, with uploads up to 100 MB (Greenhouse Support, updated August 19, 2026). Its parse-failure page adds that Greenhouse Recruiting can't parse resumes larger than 2.5 MB, so a heavy file may upload but not parse.

Workday's HiredScore FAQ lists DOC, DOCX, PDF, RTF and TXT for resume attachments, and says HiredScore does not assign a grade when it cannot parse a resume (Workday documentation, last updated June 23, 2023). That is one Workday product, and the page is old. iCIMS describes resume parsing as technology that extracts data "usually from a Word or PDF document", and lists as a benefit for candidates that "the CV content matters more than its design" (iCIMS, September 11, 2020).

Export from a word processor so the text is selectable. A scan or a photo of a printed page is an image, which is the case Greenhouse lists as failing. Name the file FirstName-LastName-Resume.pdf. That naming is our habit, not a rule from any source.

Step 3: Use plain headings and put contact details in the body

Use the headings people expect: Summary (optional), Experience, Education, Skills. Inventive headings such as "My Journey" give a recruiter nothing to anchor on. Greenhouse lists resumes without clear sections among its parse failures, but no vendor we read publishes a list of headings it recognises, so the choice of these exact words is common practice without data.

Put your name, phone, email and city in the main body of the page, at the top. Greenhouse names contact details placed in a header, footer or text box as a reason a parse can fail (see Step 1). Keep dates in a consistent format, for example "Mar 2022 - Jun 2024", on every role.

Step 4: Use the job post's words, honestly

Recruiters search and filter. Greenhouse says "When a role is popular, recruiters may filter the queue" and that "Recruiters might also conduct search queries to identify candidates" (Greenhouse, January 8, 2025). If a recruiter types a skill or a job title, a resume that never uses that word has less chance of coming up. That is our inference. We read no vendor page that describes how search ranks results.

So read the posting and note the skills, tools and titles it asks for. Where you really have that experience, use the posting's term instead of your own synonym: "customer support" if the post says "customer support", not "client happiness". Do not add skills you lack. Nothing we read says that packing a resume with keywords helps, and a person reads the resume after any search.

The resume keywords guide shows how to pull the terms out of a posting. For a routine that adapts one resume per job, see how to tailor a resume to a job description.

Step 5: Write bullets a person wants to read

Greenhouse says that "by and large, applications in Greenhouse are reviewed by real people, one by one, in the order received" (Greenhouse). The reader is a person with a queue. Put the job title and employer first in each role, then two to four bullets that each start with a verb and name what you did, with what, and the result you can honestly state.

Use numbers only when you have them. An invented figure is worse than none, because an interviewer will ask where it came from.

Before and after example

The text below is an example written by us for this guide. The person, employer and tools are made up. It shows the changes from Steps 1 to 5 on one resume.

Part Before (hard to parse and to skim) After (plain and specific)
Layout Two columns; name, phone and email inside the page header; skills drawn as bars One column; name, phone, email and city as the first lines of the page; skills as a text list
Heading "My Professional Journey" "Experience"
Role line "Helped the customer team at an online store" "Customer Support Specialist, Brightside Goods (example employer), Mar 2022 - Jun 2024"
Bullet "Responsible for various customer matters and tasks" "Resolved billing and shipping tickets in Zendesk; wrote help-center articles for the most common questions"
Skills Bars labelled "Communication" and "Teamwork" "Zendesk, order management, refund policy, email support"
File resume final v7 (2).docx with a photo Jane-Doe-Resume.pdf, text only

The "After" column does not promise a result. It removes the layout elements Greenhouse lists as parse failures and gives a recruiter terms they might search and facts they can check.

What ATS software does and does not do

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is the software employers use to collect applications and move candidates through hiring stages. The what is an ATS resume page explains how one stores and sorts candidates.

A widely repeated claim is that 75% of resumes are rejected by an ATS before anyone reads them. The origin of that figure is Unknown: we searched and found no primary source, meaning no study, survey or dataset that states it. We do not use it, and you should be wary of any page that does.

What the vendors say is narrower. Greenhouse says that certain roles "might use auto-reject rules (based on specific criteria)", that these are "set and controlled directly by recruiters", and, about its own software, that "AI doesn't score or rank applications" (Greenhouse, January 8, 2025). Ashby's documentation says its auto-reject rules "automatically archive candidates based on their answers" to application questions, and that the feature can only be configured on its Enterprise plan (Ashby docs, created July 10, 2025).

Both vendors describe rules that an employer sets up: Greenhouse says they use specific criteria, and Ashby says they act on answers to application questions. We found no statement on either page that the software discards a resume because of its layout or its keywords. We do not know how other systems behave. So the risks we can source are specific: a rule an employer has set, and a file the parser cannot read.

Common mistakes

Checklist before you upload

Sources

All pages were read on 2026-11-12.

Disclosure

atsresumeguide.com is published by the makers of AIHawk, a job application tool. The About page gives details.

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