FCK ATS

ATS-friendly CV format

An ATS-friendly CV is not a special template. It is a file whose text comes out of a parser in the right order, with your name, job titles, dates and skills landing in the right fields. Here is what helps and what quietly breaks it.

File type

  • Use DOCX or a PDF exported from Word, Google Docs or similar, where you can select the text.
  • Avoid scanned or photographed PDFs: the page is a picture, and there is no text at all to read.
  • Avoid PDFs from design tools that turn letters into shapes or split words into single letters.

Layout

  • One column. Parsers read left to right, top to bottom. With two columns, the right column cuts into the left one and your experience mixes with your skills.
  • No tables for experience or skills: cells are often read in one run, so dates, titles and companies merge into a single stream.
  • Nothing important in headers and footers. Some systems skip them, so a phone number there may never arrive.
  • No text inside images, icons or skill bars. A row of five squares carries no words; "Python, advanced" does.

Sections and wording

  • Standard headings: Experience, Skills, Education, then Courses or Languages. Creative names like "My journey" confuse the parser.
  • Your name as plain text at the top, not inside a coloured banner or a picture.
  • Dates in one consistent format, for example "03.2022 – 08.2024" or "Mar 2022 – Aug 2024".
  • The job title the way postings write it. If they say "Python Developer" and you wrote "Lead Specialist", a search will not connect the two.

Fonts and length

Any common font works; fancy ones sometimes come out as broken characters. A junior CV usually fits on one page, an experienced one on two. Length matters less than whether the first half page tells a recruiter you match the job.

Is there an "ATS template" I should download?

You do not need one. Any clean one-column document with standard headings parses well. The danger is in decorative templates, not plain ones.

PDF or DOCX - which is safer?

Both work if the text is real text. DOCX is the safest; a PDF exported from a word processor is fine too. Scans and image-based PDFs are not.

How do I know my CV parses correctly?

Run it through a check: you will see exactly what text comes out and which layout problems were found.