An applicant tracking system is a database, not a judge. It parses your file into fields — name, employer, dates, titles, skills — and a recruiter then searches and filters that data. Your goal is not to trick it. Your goal is to be parsed correctly and to contain the words a recruiter will actually search for.
What breaks parsing
- Text inside images or icons — invisible to the parser.
- Multi-column layouts where reading order is ambiguous. Single-column, or a narrow sidebar for short items only.
- Tables used for layout. Dates in a table cell often land in the wrong field.
- Headers and footers — some parsers skip them entirely, so never put contact details there.
- Unusual section names. Use “Experience”, “Education”, “Skills”. “My journey” is not a field the parser knows.
- Non-standard date formats. “Mar 2021 — Jun 2023” parses; “’21–’23” often does not.
Words matter more than keywords
Keyword stuffing is obvious and counterproductive — recruiters read the CV after the search. What works is using the same vocabulary as the posting where it is genuinely true of you. If the ad says “stakeholder management” and you wrote “worked with clients”, you are invisible to that search for no good reason.
- 1Paste the job posting next to your CV.
- 2List the ten most specific nouns in it: tools, methods, certifications, domains.
- 3For each, decide honestly: do I have this? If yes, make sure the exact phrase appears once, in context, in a real bullet.
- 4Never claim the ones you do not have. A false positive that surfaces in the interview costs you the role.
File format
PDF is safe with modern systems and preserves your layout, which is why we default to it. Send DOCX only when the application explicitly asks for it. Never send a scan or an image export — it will parse as an empty CV.