Quick Answer

To pass ATS resume screening, use a single-column layout, standard section headings, and exact keywords from the job description. Save your resume as .docx or a text-based PDF. Avoid tables, text boxes, graphics, skill bars, and placing contact information in headers or footers. Quantify your achievements with numbers and run your resume through an ATS checker before every submission. Roughly 75% of resumes are rejected by ATS before a recruiter ever sees them — the fixes are simple, but most candidates do not know them.

How ATS Actually Works — What Most Candidates Get Wrong

An applicant tracking system is not an intelligent reader. It is a parser. It strips your resume of all formatting and extracts raw text, then attempts to categorise that text into fields: name, email, work experience, education, skills. It then scores your resume against the job description based on keyword matches and relevance.

The critical insight most candidates miss: ATS does not see what you see. A beautifully designed two-column resume with skill bars and icons looks like a jumbled stream of text to an ATS. A phone number in a Word header may be completely invisible. A skill represented as a graphical bar contributes zero parseable information.

Understanding this changes everything about how you format your resume.

12 Proven Tips to Pass ATS Screening

1. Use a Single-Column Layout

This is the single most important formatting rule. ATS reads left-to-right, top-to-bottom in a single stream. Two-column layouts cause text from both columns to merge into one jumbled paragraph. Sidebars, parallel sections, and split layouts all fail.

2. Use Standard Section Headings

ATS looks for recognisable section labels to categorise your content. Use: Experience (or Work Experience), Education, Skills, Summary, Certifications. Creative headings like "My Journey," "What I Bring," or "Career Highlights" are not recognised by most parsers.

3. Mirror Keywords from the Job Description

This is where most candidates lose points. ATS matches your resume text against the job posting. If the posting says "project management" and you wrote "managing projects," some systems will not count it as a match. Read the job description carefully and use the exact phrases that appear in it — naturally woven into your experience bullets.

4. Save as .docx (Safest) or Text-Based PDF

Almost every ATS parses .docx reliably. Text-based PDFs (created from Word or Google Docs) also work in most systems. Never submit a scanned PDF, a Canva export, or an image-based file. When in doubt, .docx is always the safest choice.

5. Keep Contact Information in the Document Body

Most ATS systems do not read Word headers and footers. Your name, email, phone number, and LinkedIn URL must appear in the main body of the document — not in a designed header block or footer.

6. Avoid Tables and Text Boxes

Tables and text boxes in Word are treated as floating objects by ATS parsers. Content inside them is often extracted out of order or ignored entirely. This includes skills grids, contact info tables, and reference layouts.

7. Remove All Graphics and Icons

Skill bars, progress circles, profile photos, decorative icons, and infographic elements are image objects — completely invisible to ATS. The word "Python" inside a skill bar may never appear in your ATS record. List skills as plain text instead.

8. Quantify Every Achievement

ATS scoring increasingly values specificity. "Managed a team" is weaker than "Managed a team of 12 across 3 time zones, delivering a $2M project 2 weeks ahead of schedule." Numbers, percentages, and dollar amounts make your resume both ATS-friendly and compelling to the human who reads it after.

9. Include a Skills Section with Exact Tool Names

List your technical skills, software, and certifications as a plain-text skills section. Use the exact names as they appear in job postings: "Google Analytics," not "GA." "Salesforce CRM," not "CRM software." This section is where ATS picks up hard-skill keyword matches.

10. Use Standard Fonts

Stick to Calibri, Arial, Georgia, Garamond, or Times New Roman. Unusual or decorative fonts can cause encoding issues in some parsers. Body text should be 10–12pt, headings 11–13pt. Do not go below 10pt.

11. Do Not Keyword-Stuff

Older advice suggested hiding keywords in white text or cramming every keyword into the document. Modern ATS (Greenhouse, Workable, Lever) uses contextual AI that detects stuffing and penalises it. Use keywords naturally within your experience descriptions — not as an invisible list.

12. Run the Plain Text Test Before Submitting

Select all text in your resume (Ctrl+A), copy it, and paste it into Notepad. If it reads in a logical order — name, contact, summary, experience, education, skills — your resume will parse correctly. If sections are missing, jumbled, or out of order, you have a formatting problem that needs fixing.

ATS Screening Checklist — Before Every Application

  • Single-column layout confirmed — no sidebars, columns, or parallel sections
  • Standard section headings used throughout
  • Contact info in the document body, not in a header or footer
  • No tables, text boxes, graphics, or skill bars
  • Saved as .docx or text-based PDF
  • Keywords from the job description included naturally in experience bullets
  • Skills section lists tools and technologies by their exact names
  • At least three achievements include specific numbers or percentages
  • Plain text test passed — paste into Notepad reads cleanly
  • ATS checker score reviewed against the target job description

Sources: Jobscan ATS research; SHRM Talent Acquisition data; Greenhouse, Workable, and Lever ATS documentation; LinkedIn Talent Solutions hiring data.