ATS-friendly resume (practical, not magical)
Applicant tracking systems vary by vendor and employer configuration. What stays constant is that parsers like predictable structure, literal section titles, and text you can select—not flattened images hiding your experience.
High-impact fixes
- Use “Experience”, “Education”, “Skills” instead of clever labels.
- Keep one column for job history; parsers struggle with side-by-side layouts.
- Mirror important nouns from the posting where they are truthful—density is not the goal.
Test before you submit
Export the same file you plan to upload, select text in a PDF viewer, and confirm dates read left-to-right. If you cannot select text, assume an ATS will struggle too.