How to make a resume that passes applicant tracking systems

What does an applicant tracking system actually do?

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is the software a company uses to post jobs, collect applications and move candidates through stages. Workday, Greenhouse, Lever and iCIMS are common examples. When you upload a resume, the ATS runs it through a parser that pulls your name, contact details, job titles, employers, dates, education and skills into fields a recruiter can search and filter.

The parser reads text in order, top to bottom and left to right. Two-column layouts, text inside tables or text boxes, icons instead of words, and content in the page header or footer often come out jumbled, missing or attached to the wrong field. A recruiter who searches for Python will not find yours if the parser lost it.

What an ATS does not do, in most companies, is reject you on its own. Recruiters use it to search and sort; a human still decides. A clean, readable resume with the right words is what gets you found.

What is the ATS friendly resume format for 2026?

The safe format has not changed much in years and will not change in 2026. It is plain, and that is a feature: a recruiter spends six to ten seconds on a first pass and needs to find your title, employer and dates without hunting. The resume builder on DocGopher produces this layout in a modern or classic style; the rules below apply equally in Word or Google Docs.

• One column. Sidebars and two-column designs are the main cause of parsing errors.
• Standard section headings: Summary, Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications. Not Where I Have Been or My Toolkit.
• Real text, not tables, text boxes or images. Skill bars and star ratings are images to a parser.
• Your name and contact details in the body of the page, not in the document header or footer, which many parsers skip.
• No photo. US employers do not expect one, and many discard resumes with a photo to avoid discrimination claims. If your builder offers a photo field, leave it empty.
• One standard font, 10.5 to 12 point: Calibri, Arial, Georgia or Garamond. Black plus at most one dark accent color.
• Dates in one consistent format, MM/YYYY or Month YYYY.
• Letter size (8.5 by 11 inches) with margins between 0.5 and 1 inch.
• No hidden keywords in white text. Recruiters see them when they open the file, and it reads as deception.

What to put on a resume: sections and order

Every resume has the same core sections; what changes with experience is their order and how much space each gets. Put the section that makes the strongest case for you first.

Name and contact: full name in the largest text on the page, then city and state, phone, email and a LinkedIn or portfolio URL. No street address, date of birth or marital status.

Summary: two or three lines stating your title, years of experience, your main strength and what you are aiming at. Skip the old Objective. Entry-level candidates can use this space for their degree and the field they are entering.

Experience: each role with job title, employer, city and state, dates, and three to six bullets, most recent first. Group short contracts or freelance work under one heading.

Education: degree, school, graduation year (optional after ten years of experience), GPA only if it is 3.5 or higher and recent.

Skills: hard skills, tools and languages in short lines. Leave out soft skills such as communication; show them in the bullets instead.

Optional: Certifications, Projects, Volunteer work, Publications, when they strengthen the case for this job.

• Student or recent graduate: Contact, Summary, Education, Projects or Internships, Experience (part-time jobs count), Skills.
• Two to ten years: Contact, Summary, Experience, Skills, Education, Certifications.
• Career changer: Contact, Summary naming the new direction, Skills relevant to the target role, Experience with bullets rewritten for transferable results, Education.
• Senior or executive: Contact, Summary, Selected achievements, Experience (older roles compressed to one line), Education.

How to write resume bullets that show results

A bullet that lists a duty tells the recruiter what the job was. A bullet that states a result tells them what you did with it, and that is what gets interviews.

Use the pattern action verb, what you did, measurable outcome. Responsible for managing social media accounts becomes Grew Instagram following from 2,000 to 18,000 in 14 months and drove 12 percent of online sales. Start with a strong verb (Led, Built, Reduced, Launched), keep each bullet to one or two lines, and put a number in at least half of them.

If you do not have exact numbers, estimate honestly and round: roughly 40 support tickets a day, about $2 million in annual accounts. Scope counts too: for a team of 12, across three states.

Mirror the posting's language. If it asks for project management and stakeholder communication, use those exact phrases where they are true. That is the legitimate version of keyword optimization: the employer's words for things you actually did.

How long should a resume be?

One page if you have under ten years of experience. Two pages when you have more and every line on page two still earns its place. Three pages is for academic CVs and federal applications.

A one page resume forces choices, and those choices are the point: the recruiter sees only your strongest material. To get there, cut roles older than 15 years to a single line, remove bullets that describe duties without results, shrink the Summary to two lines, and reduce margins to 0.6 inch before you touch the font size. Never go below 10.5 point.

To check length, upload the file to the word counter, which reports words, characters and pages for a Word or PDF file. A one page resume usually lands between 400 and 600 words; a two page resume between 700 and 1,000.

Should a resume be a PDF or a Word document?

Send a PDF unless the posting or the application form asks for .docx. A PDF looks the same on every device, keeps your fonts and spacing, and cannot be edited by accident. Mainstream ATS software has parsed PDFs correctly for more than a decade, provided the PDF contains real text and not a scanned image.

Some employers and recruiting agencies still ask for Word so they can add their letterhead before forwarding the file. Give them what they ask for.

If you only have one format, convert it. Word to PDF turns a .docx into a PDF with the layout intact, and PDF to Word gives you an editable .docx back, tables included. Both are free and need no account. Word itself saves to PDF with File, Save As, and Google Docs with File, Download, PDF Document. Name the file with your name: Jordan-Lee-Resume.pdf.

How to make a resume online or in Word

Word and Google Docs include resume templates under File, New or the template gallery; pick a single-column one and remove any photo placeholder, icon or sidebar before you start. Pages on a Mac has similar templates and exports to PDF and Word.

DocGopher's resume builder is free, needs no sign-up, adds no watermark and gives you a one- or two-page resume in a modern or classic style as a PDF or a Word file. The free resume template page opens the same builder. Your details are deleted after 30 minutes, so download both formats before you close the tab.

1. Collect your material first: every job with dates, three to six result bullets per role, degrees, certifications and a skills list.
2. Open the builder and enter your name, city and state, phone, email and LinkedIn URL. Leave the photo field empty for US applications.
3. Add each role, most recent first, and paste in your bullets.
4. Add education, then skills grouped in short lines, then certifications if you have them.
5. Choose the classic layout for finance, law and government, modern for everything else.
6. Download the PDF for applications and the Word file for employers who request .docx.

Proofreading and final checks

Spell check does not catch a wrong year, a manger instead of a manager, or an old job title. Read the resume aloud once, slowly, then bottom to top, which stops your eyes from skimming familiar lines.

Test the parsing yourself: open the PDF, select all the text and paste it into a plain text editor. If the sections come out in order and every date sits next to its job, an ATS will read it the same way.

Finally, make sure the resume and your cover letter use the same name, contact details and job titles.

• Every date is in the same format and in order, most recent first.
• No first-person pronouns in bullets, and periods on all bullets or none.
• File named Firstname-Lastname-Resume.pdf, under 1 MB, opens on a phone.