How to Make an ATS-Friendly Resume (+ Free Templates)

Learn everything you need to know to make your resume ATS-friendly below.

What is an ATS (Applicant Tracking System)?

Applicant tracking systems are software platforms that large companies use to manage the job applications they receive and streamline the hiring process.

If you’ve ever applied for a job and had to upload your resume and then enter your information into an online portal, then you’ve interacted with an ATS. Greenhouse, Workday, and Jobvite are some of the most common ATS platforms, and are used by companies all over the world.

@resumegenius What is the ATS (Applicant Tracking System)? How does it affect your resume and job application? If you’ve ever asked those questions, here’s a simple guide to understand how the ATS system affects your job search. #jobsearch #jobseeker #resume #ats ♬ original sound – Resume Genius | Career Tips

While applicant tracking systems can be used to screen and sort job applications, that’s just one of the many functions they offer. ATS are also used for tasks like posting jobs, scheduling interviews, automating emails, and tracking candidates through the hiring process.

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How ATS software impacts you

If you’ve looked up how to write a resume online before, you’ve probably seen claims that over 70% of all job applications are automatically rejected by ATS — before a hiring manager even sees them!

The reality is that the risk of being rejected by ATS is overstated. Most resumes are still reviewed by a recruiter, even if they use ATS software to collect and sort the job applications.

This gets overblown, that ATS are preventing recruiters from even seeing resumes – that doesn’t really happen.

Sometimes when people have a weird resume format (maybe they pulled it off Canva, maybe it’s not saved as a PDF) the resume format doesn’t read on the ATS.

The recruiter has to download and open it and that extra step could just prevent them from looking at your resume. That’s why I say have a clean format, just put it as a PDF, that will often be easier.

Bonnie Dilber, Business Recruiting Manager at Zapier

So ATS probably isn’t what’s preventing you from landing a job — but that doesn’t mean it’s not important to optimize your resume. Making an ATS-friendly resume:

• reduces the chance you’ll be rejected because your information wasn’t parsed properly.
• saves you time reformatting or retyping information that’s already on your resume.
• makes it easier for the recruiting or hiring manager to access and review your resume.

Review of the top free ATS resume checkers

If you want to see how well ATS can read your resume, you can upload your resume to an ATS resume checker and receive a score.

Here are reviews of five of the best resume checkers online:

Resume Genius ATS resume checker

The Resume Genius ATS resume checker checks your resume for free and looks for ways to improve it in six areas:

• ATS parsability
• Experience
• Skills
• Education
• Summary
• Header & contact details

Just upload your resume into the widget and wait for your overall ATS compatibility score. The resume checker supports MS Word, PDFs, HTML, rich text, and plain text files.

Your results will appear on a new page and look like this:

For each of the six areas it checks, you’ll receive a message indicating whether errors were found. Finally, you’ll have the option to polish your resume by using the Resume Genius resume builder.

Jobscan ATS resume scanner

The Jobscan resume scanner evaluates your resume’s searchability and skills, and provides some basic tips on how to improve your resume. But if you want to see many of the skills you’re missing, or how the scanner rates your formatting, you’ll have to upgrade to a premium subscription.

Premium membership: upgrading to a premium plans gives you access to unlimited scans and a number of extra tools. It costs $49.95 per month or $89.95 quarterly (every three months).

Enhancv resume checker

The Enhancv resume checker features a flashy interface and provides an overview of many aspects of your resume, including parse rate, how well you quantify the impact of your work, repetition, spelling and grammar, format, sections, and style.

However, most of Enhancv’s feedback is only accessible with a premium subscription, and we found some of their advice for creating an ATS-friendly resume disagreeable – such as using a multi-column template or adding in a “personality” section.

Premium subscription: a premium subscription gets you access to the full report as well as content suggestions, free templates, and Enhancv’s resume and cover letter builder. It costs $24.99 monthly, $49.97 quarterly, or $74.94 every six months.

Resume Worded resume scanner

Resume Worded’s scanner provides an overall score, a snapshot of buzzwords identified in your resume, and some basic checks for proper resume formatting.

However, the free plan is extremely limited. In our test, the only helpful information we were able to see was two buzzwords that the scanner flagged. The premium membership seems to promise more, with a line-by-line analysis and magic rewrite tool.

Resume Worded also has a separate tool for tailoring your resume to a specific job, called “Targeted Resume.” It identifies keywords in your resume as well as the job description, and gives your resume a relevancy score. While we like that this tool doesn’t count soft skills in the relevancy score, we don’t recommend placing too much faith in this scanner because it highlights some keywords like “office.”

Pro subscription: with a pro subscription you can access your full reports as well as sample bullet points, an AI writing tool, and resume templates. It costs $49 per month, $99 quarterly, or $229 per year.

MyPerfectResume ATS resume checker

The ATS resume checker from MyPerfectResume provides an overall resume score when you upload your resume. But if you want to see any other suggestions for improvements, you have to use the resume builder.

Pro subscription: with a pro subscription you can edit your resume in the resume builder and gain access to templates, a personalized URL, and the cover letter builder. It costs $2.95 for a 14 day trial (which autorenews at $23.95 monthly), or $95.40 per year.

Key takeaways:

• If you choose to use a resume scanner, don’t worry too much about your score. As you can see in the images above, our score varied between 50 and 85 percent across the different scanners – using the exact same resume.
• You should remain skeptical of any suggestions you get from a scanner, and only take what is really useful. For example, fitting the word “interpersonal” into your resume 5 more times isn’t going to help you bypass ATS software.

How to make an ATS-friendly resume

Want to make sure your resume doesn’t run into issues with ATS software? We’ll show you exactly how to make a great resume that’s ATS-friendly and impresses employers.

1. Use an ATS-optimized resume format

Choose an ATS-friendly resume template that can easily easily be read by ATS software.  Avoid templates with sidebars or complicated tables because these often cause problems when uploading your resume.

It’s also important to use a standard resume font like Times New Roman, Calibri, Arial, or Georgia. According to HR managers, more obscure fonts can cause issues with the content of your resume rendering properly.

@resumegenius Follow these tips to make an ATS-friendly resume and beat the applicant tracking system #resume #resumetips #jobsearch #jobsearchtips #atsresume ♬ Darling – Trees and Lucy

2. Correctly label your sections

Applicant Tracking Systems organize your information based on common resume headings like “Work Experience” and “Skills.”

With that in mind, it’s best to play it safe by sticking to standard heading titles.

3. Include job-related keywords

Recruiters use ATS software to identify applications that include specific job-related resume keywords, or filter candidates in their database by searching for specific skills.

To make sure that your resume catches the attention of hiring managers, read through the job listing for keywords to include on your resume — these might be specific credentials, types of experience, or skills. Including the hard skills listed in the job description will make it easier for hiring managers to find your resume.

If you’re using an ATS resume checker, we recommend reviewing the skills assessment or score with some healthy skepticism. Don’t get caught up trying to squeeze meaningless keywords or an overload of soft skills into your resume. Instead, just focus on making sure your resume demonstrates as many skills from the job description as possible.

There are some applicant tracking systems that scan for keyword matches and will assign a percentage match to a resume and stack-rank them.

I know most recruiters take that with a grain of salt so they’re ultimately going to look at all of them, they don’t just reject everything below a certain percent from my experience.

But knowing that, having language that matches the language used for the job is going to be helpful.

Bonnie Dilber, Business Recruiting Manager at Zapier

4. Save your resume as a PDF or .docx

Always check the job listing to see if a specific file format is requested and follow those instructions.

If the employer doesn’t specify what format to save your resume as, use a PDF or a Word document, and avoid submitting your resume as other file types.

Frequently asked questions about ATS

If you still have questions about ATS and ATS-friendly resumes, check out the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about ATS below.

1. What is an ATS-friendly resume?

An ATS-friendly resume is any resume that can be easily scanned by ATS software.

The things that make a resume ATS-friendly are the same things that make a resume better for the hiring manager — there’s no special trick.

The most important thing to do is keep your resume format simple by avoiding the following:

• Tables
• Images
• Nonstandard fonts
• Multiple columns

ATS software parses the text on a resume, “reading” it from left to right and top to bottom, so tables, multiple columns, and strange or unique fonts can cause problems.

Finally, make sure you include resume keywords from the job description. Hiring managers use ATS software to identify resumes that match their job descriptions, so use the same wording that appears in the job description when describing your experience, achievements, and skills.

2. How do you check if your resume is ATS-friendly?

To know if your resume is ATS-friendly, go over it and check for the following:

• Single-column formatting
• Chronological work history
• Standard font
• Standard section headings
• No graphics
• No tables
• Skills and keywords from the job description
• File saved as .pdf or .docx

Finally, you can run your resume through an ATS resume scanner.

3. Why do companies use applicant tracking systems?

Companies use ATS software to handle large volumes of applications. These systems help HR teams automatically collect, sort, and filter resumes based on qualifications and keywords.

ATS software also standardizes the information in applicants’ resumes and creates a searchable database of candidates that companies can reference for future openings.

4. Do resumes get auto-rejected by ATS?

Most resumes are viewed by recruiters who decide whether to reject candidates.

However, ATS do use what are referred to as knockout questions. These are separate questions you need to fill out when applying for the job, and are usually about how many years of experience you have or your availability.

If your answer isn’t what the employer is looking for, your application will get automatically rejected. These knockout questions are what people are referring to when they talk about being rejected before a real person even reviews their resume.

5. What is an ATS score?

Applicant Tracking Systems may assign a percentage score to show how well a resume matches the job description or search criteria. Every organization uses these scores differently. Resumes scoring higher than 80% are prioritized by the system, but recruiters still have access to and can read all resumes submitted.

ATS resume checkers also assign a score to a resume showing how well it can be parsed by an ATS. Make sure your resume scores high on an ATS resume checker before submitting it to a large organization that’s likely to use an ATS.

6. What are ATS skills?

ATS skills are specific skills that an employer tells its ATS to scan for in job applications. Applicant tracking systems are generally used to identify candidates with certain hard skills, as opposed to soft skills.

The skills that employers are looking for usually appear in the job description or job listing for the open position. So, check the job listing for the hard skills that you have and list them in the skills section of your resume.