How to write a résumé that both software and recruiters can read

Most applications are read by software before a person: an applicant-tracking system (ATS) parses the résumé into fields — name, contact, employers, dates, skills — and recruiters search and sort those fields. A beautiful two-column template can turn into gibberish in that parse and never reach a human. This guide covers what the software needs, what the recruiter needs in the seven seconds they spend on a first pass, and how the résumé builder is laid out to satisfy both.

What an ATS does with your file

The parser reads text in the order it finds it in the file, looks for section headings it recognises ("Experience", "Education", "Skills"), and extracts job title, company and date ranges from each block. Recruiters then search — by keyword, title, years — and read the parsed profile as often as the original. Two consequences: your headings should be the standard words, not "Where I've Been"; and keywords from the job description should appear in your text where they're true, because a search for "SQL" won't find "database querying".

Layouts that break, layouts that work

Parsers read left to right, top to bottom. Two columns get read across, mixing a skills sidebar into the job history. Tables lose their headers. Text in headers and footers is often skipped entirely — put contact details in the body. Icons, skill bars, charts and photos become nothing or noise. Text saved as an image is invisible. The layout that works is boring by design: one column, standard headings, plain bullets, a common font, real text throughout. It is also what recruiters find fastest to scan, which is why the best-designed résumés from recruiting professionals look plain.

Writing bullets that get read

The first human pass is seconds long and looks for evidence, not duties. "Responsible for social media" is a duty; "Grew Instagram from 2k to 30k followers in 14 months, driving 18% of online sales" is evidence. The pattern: action verb, what you did, a number that shows the result. Three to five bullets per recent role, one or two for old ones. Lead with the achievement most relevant to the job you're applying for, and adjust the summary and the top bullets for each application — the software rewards matching terms and the recruiter rewards relevance, and both can tell a generic résumé from a targeted one. Run the finished text through the readability checker: short sentences, concrete words.

Length, order and the photo question

One page under roughly ten years' experience, two at most beyond that — trim old roles to a line rather than shrinking the font below 10.5 pt. Reverse-chronological order (most recent first) is what parsers and recruiters expect; functional résumés that hide dates raise the question they're hiding. No photo in the US, UK, Canada or Australia, where employers discard them to avoid bias claims; expected in parts of continental Europe and Asia — check the local norm. No date of birth, marital status or full address; city and country suffice.

File format and final checks

Send a PDF unless the posting asks for Word: PDFs preserve layout and parse well when they contain real text, which is what "print to PDF" from a browser or Word produces (a scanned or image PDF is unreadable to an ATS). Name the file sensibly — Firstname-Lastname-CV.pdf. Then the check that matters: open the PDF, select all, paste into a plain text editor, and read it. If the text comes out in order and every section is present, the software will read it too. Word to PDF converts a Word master; the text extractor performs the paste test in one click.